The research, published in the journal Heliyon, focused on a distinctive group within Iran’s primary health-care infrastructure: Women Health Volunteers, community members who collaborate with primary health-care centers on a voluntary, unpaid basis. These volunteers undergo basic health training and assist health professionals in delivering health promotion and prevention initiatives within their neighborhoods. Their responsibilities typically include educating families on healthy lifestyles, improving maternal and child health outcomes, encouraging chronic disease self-management, and bridging the gap between community members and primary care services. As these activities are unpaid and community-oriented, health volunteers represent an essential pillar of organized volunteerism within the Iranian primary health system.

To understand what motivates these volunteers, the research team drew on the Functional Approach to Volunteerism proposed by Clary and Snyder, a framework that holds individuals engage in volunteer activities because volunteering serves different psychological functions. These include the expression of values, social interaction, understanding, career development, enhancement, and protective motives. From this perspective, religiosity and spiritual health may be particularly relevant to the values function, as both constructs are associated with altruistic beliefs, meaning in life, and concern for the welfare of others. The framework is also consistent with Self-Determination Theory, which suggests individuals are more likely to engage in sustained prosocial behaviors when those behaviors satisfy intrinsic needs for meaning, relatedness, and personal fulfillment.

The study was designed as an analytical cross-sectional, non-experimental investigation conducted in 2025 in Saveh city. The final sample size was determined to be 345 participants initially enrolled, calculated using G*Power software based on a linear multiple regression model. Assuming a small-to-moderate effect size, a significance level of 0.05, a statistical power of 90 percent, and six predictors—religiosity, spiritual health, age, gender, education level, and marital status—the minimum required sample size was estimated at 181 participants. To account for potential incomplete questionnaires and improve statistical precision, a larger sample was recruited. Of the 345 health volunteers initially enrolled, 324 respondents with complete data were included in the final analysis.

Simple random sampling was employed after obtaining approval from the relevant ethics committee. A list of all registered health volunteers in Saveh was collected in collaboration with Saveh University of Medical Sciences, health centers, health bases, and pre-hospital emergency services. After assigning a unique numerical code to each individual on this list, a random number table was utilized to ensure random selection and minimize bias. Each number extracted from the table was matched with the assigned numerical code of the volunteers, and if a match occurred, that individual was selected as a final participant. Questionnaires were administered in two formats: online, completed by 165 respondents, and paper-based in person, initially distributed to 180 respondents, of which 21 incomplete questionnaires were excluded, yielding a final paper-based total of 159. Respondents were not randomly assigned to the two modes of data collection; rather, the mode of completion was determined by participants’ accessibility and personal preference. The researchers compared the main study variables across the two formats using the Mann–Whitney U test and found no statistically significant differences.

Three validated instruments were used to collect data. The Volunteer Functions Inventory, developed by Clary and colleagues, assesses the motivations underlying volunteering across six subscales: Protective, Values, Career, Social, Understanding, and Enhancement. The validated Persian version used in this study contained 29 items, with the total possible score ranging from 29 to 203. The Religiosity Questionnaire, based on the work of Glock and Stark, gauges individuals’ religious beliefs and attitudes across four dimensions—belief, emotional, consequential, and ritual—yielding a total score range of 0 to 104. The Spiritual Well-Being Scale developed by Paloutzian and Ellison is a 20-item self-report instrument assessing two dimensions of spiritual health: religious well-being and existential well-being, with a total score range of 20 to 120. In the present study, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients indicated acceptable reliability for all three instruments, with the Volunteer Functions Inventory reaching 0.98, the Religiosity Questionnaire 0.93, and the Spiritual Well-Being Scale 0.88.

The results revealed a significant positive correlation between the total score of volunteer functions and both spiritual health and religiosity. The correlation between volunteer functions and spiritual health was 0.26, while the correlation with religiosity was notably stronger at 0.40. Respondents with higher spiritual health and religiosity exhibited higher levels of volunteer functions. Furthermore, a significant positive correlation was observed between spiritual health and religiosity themselves, at 0.48. The majority of respondents demonstrated moderate levels of spiritual health and religiosity: 67.9 percent fell into the moderate category for spiritual health, and 70.1 percent for religiosity. The mean age of respondents was 29.87 years, with 63.9 percent female, 53.1 percent married, and 52.2 percent holding a bachelor’s degree.

Multiple linear regression analysis showed that, after controlling for socio-demographic variables including age, gender, education level, and marital status, both spiritual health and religiosity independently and significantly predicted the total volunteering function score. Spiritual health was positively and significantly associated with volunteering functions, with an unstandardized coefficient of 0.402 and a p-value of 0.021. Religiosity emerged as an even stronger positive predictor, with an unstandardized coefficient of 0.801 and a p-value below 0.001. Among the socio-demographic variables, only education level showed a significant negative effect, such that higher educational levels were associated with significantly lower volunteering function scores. In contrast, age, gender, and marital status were not significantly related to volunteering functions. The final regression model accounted for approximately 21 percent of the variance in volunteering function scores, and the overall model was statistically significant.

The demographic analysis revealed additional patterns. A weak but significant association was found between age and religiosity, suggesting that religiosity increases with age—a trend consistent with some studies observing an increase in religiosity in later life stages, which may be linked to accumulated life experiences and a heightened search for meaning during these periods. Women exhibited significantly higher levels of religiosity and spiritual health compared to men, and married respondents showed significantly higher levels of religiosity than single respondents. These differences may be influenced by gender-related socialization patterns, gender roles, and participation in religious social networks, while marital status may enhance engagement with religious and spiritual values through increased family responsibilities and social integration. However, the researchers noted that although these differences were statistically significant, the magnitude of associations was relatively small to moderate rather than strong.

The finding that higher education levels were associated with lower levels of spiritual well-being, religiosity, and volunteer functions warrants careful interpretation. The researchers suggested this pattern may reflect differences in how individuals with varying educational backgrounds engage with religion and spirituality. Secularization theory has often been used to explain this association, suggesting that higher education and modernization may expose individuals to broader worldviews and critical thinking perspectives, which can be accompanied by a gradual decline in traditional religious involvement. However, this relationship is not universal and appears to be context-dependent, influenced by cultural setting, measurement approaches, and individual differences. The correlation coefficients ranged from approximately negative 0.11 to negative 0.19, indicating weak but consistent trends that warrant further investigation rather than strong causal or deterministic interpretations.

The researchers acknowledged that spiritual health and religiosity overlap conceptually, and that this overlap might influence the observed relationships. While related, these two concepts are distinct: spiritual health generally refers to a broad sense of meaning, connection, and existential well-being, whereas religiosity is more about how closely someone follows religious beliefs, rituals, and practices. Previous research has shown that although these areas are correlated, they are generally considered distinct constructs capturing different aspects of people’s inner lives and behaviors. The instruments utilized in this study are grounded in established theory and have been validated as measuring distinct constructs, which mitigates the risk of confounding. The magnitude of the observed associations is consistent with prior empirical reports, suggesting the results do not arise solely from conceptual overlap. Nonetheless, some shared variance is inevitable when studying closely related psychosocial concepts, and future research could benefit from using more precise or multidimensional measures to more clearly differentiate between spiritual health and religiosity.

Several limitations constrain the interpretation of these findings. Owing to the cross-sectional design, causal inferences cannot be drawn; as data were collected at a single point in time, only associations—not causal relationships—between religiosity or spiritual health and volunteering can be inferred. Social desirability bias remains a potential concern, as respondents may overreport religious devotion owing to its socially valued status, though anonymity mitigated this risk. Additionally, socioeconomic status and prior volunteer experience were not assessed and therefore could not be included as covariates in the regression models. These variables are known to be associated with both religiosity and volunteering behavior, and their omission could potentially confound the observed associations. Several secondary bivariate analyses were also conducted without formal adjustment for multiple comparisons, meaning the possibility of Type I error inflation cannot be completely excluded.

The cultural context of these findings deserves particular attention. In individualistic countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia, volunteering is often driven by personal goals such as learning new skills, self-development, and career growth. In contrast, in collectivist societies like India, Japan, and China, motivation tends to come from ethical and social values, such as supporting the community, sharing responsibility, and following religious norms. The researchers cautioned that care is warranted when generalizing these findings to culturally different populations. Within the specific context of a religiously oriented society like Iran, however, the results suggest that religious beliefs, practices, and broader dimensions of spiritual well-being may contribute meaningfully to volunteer functions. Prior research has also emphasized that combining religion with active spiritual practices—like prayer, meditation, gratitude, and quiet reflection—has a stronger effect on volunteering than simply following religious doctrines, and that the social side of religiosity, such as joining collective rituals and being part of religious communities, is especially powerful in motivating volunteer behavior.

Looking forward, the researchers recommend longitudinal and prospective studies to clarify the direction and mechanisms of the relationships between spiritual and religious dimensions and volunteering behavior. Future research should also incorporate comprehensive measures of socioeconomic background and volunteer history to better isolate the unique contributions of religiosity and spiritual health to volunteer functions. The results indicate that demographic factors, particularly educational level, may be associated with differences in volunteer functions and should be considered in future research and program development. For health systems in Iran and similar contexts that depend heavily on volunteer networks to deliver community health services, understanding these motivational foundations could prove essential for sustaining the volunteer workforce upon which primary care delivery increasingly relies.

Subject of Research: Associations between religiosity, spiritual health, and volunteer functions among community health volunteers in Iran

Article Title: Religiosity, spiritual health, and volunteer functions among health volunteers in Saveh, Iran: A cross-sectional study

Article References: Arab, F., Khademi, S., & Saeedi, M. (2026). Religiosity, spiritual health, and volunteer functions among health volunteers in Saveh, Iran: A cross-sectional study. Heliyon, 12(16), Article e45585. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45585

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45585

Keywords: religiosity, spiritual health, volunteer functions, health volunteers, Iran, cross-sectional study, volunteer motivation, primary health care, Women Health Volunteers, community health, psychology of religion, Heliyon

The theoretical backbone of the study is Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory, a sociological framework that treats social structures and individual agency as two sides of the same coin. Structures constrain what people can do, yet those same structures only persist because people repeatedly enact them. Applied to social media, the idea is elegant: platform algorithms, interface designs, and community norms shape how users present themselves, but every post, like, and revision feeds back into those very conventions. The authors argue that self-presentation is not a one-way broadcast but a continuous negotiation between personal creativity and the rules and resources the platform provides.

To capture this negotiation empirically, the researchers designed a 21-item questionnaire measuring four constructs. Social media self-presentation captured how deliberately users construct an online persona through photos, text, and homepage curation. Feedback-driven online identity measured how much users attend to likes, comments, and shares when evaluating the identity they have built. Adaptive online self-reconstruction assessed whether people actually change their profile photos, posting styles, or visual content when their constructed image falls flat. Finally, visual communication and audience awareness gauged reliance on images and short videos over text, and the felt sense that many people are watching each post regardless of whether they respond.

The sample, collected between September 2023 and February 2024 through Chinese-language survey channels including WeChat Moments, Weibo, Facebook, Instagram, and LINE, skewed young: 63.1 percent of respondents were aged 18 to 23, and students made up 65.1 percent of the sample. Women accounted for 76.8 percent of participants. After screening out 25 straight-line responses, the researchers verified that their measurement scales were internally consistent, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging from .73 to .91, and confirmed the four-factor structure with confirmatory factor analysis in R.

The headline statistical result is striking. A simultaneous multiple regression model explained 49.1 percent of the variance in visual communication and audience awareness—remarkably high for research on human behavior. All three identity constructs emerged as significant positive predictors. Feedback-driven online identity carried the largest standardized weight (β = .314), followed by adaptive online self-reconstruction (β = .262) and social media self-presentation (β = .226). In plain terms, people who monitor audience reactions most closely are also the most attuned to visual forms of expression and the most aware of being watched.

The mediation analyses added a crucial layer. When the researchers tested whether adaptive online self-reconstruction statistically mediated the link between the other two identity practices and visual communication, the pattern was consistent with partial mediation in both cases. The coefficient for social media self-presentation dropped from .582 to .355 when the reconstruction variable entered the model, and the coefficient for feedback-driven online identity fell from .641 to .430. A structural equation model reproduced the same directional pattern, though the authors are candid that its overall fit indices—CFI of .878 and RMSEA of .086—were suboptimal, and that the cross-sectional design means these are modeled associations, not proof of causal chains unfolding over time.

Platform choice told its own subtle story. Using point-biserial correlations, the study found that Facebook, Instagram, and LINE use were weakly positively associated with self-presentation, while WeChat Moments use showed a weak negative association; Weibo, QQ Space, TikTok, Xiaohongshu, Toutiao, and Twitter showed no significant link. Posting frequency mattered too: people who posted more often scored modestly higher on all three identity constructs. In Giddens’ terms, each posting episode re-engages the platform’s rules and visibility systems, giving users another occasion to observe how their identity displays land and to reconsider what comes next. Recurrence, the authors suggest, is what keeps the structure alive.

The study also surfaced a demographic wrinkle. Students and non-students were statistically indistinguishable on all three identity-management constructs, yet non-students reported significantly higher visual communication and audience awareness (M = 3.03 versus 2.84, p = .001). The authors interpret this cautiously as a sample characteristic, but it hints that people in different life positions may inhabit the same platforms with different audience configurations and communicative habits. Age-linked platform repertoires—Weibo and TikTok among the young, Facebook and LINE among older groups—place users in structurally different visibility environments even when their underlying identity practices look similar.

What makes the findings resonate beyond the statistics is how they echo Erving Goffman’s classic dramaturgy of front-stage and back-stage behavior. Social media, the authors note, blurs that boundary: private life gets folded into public performance, and the audience’s applause—measured in engagement metrics—becomes an interpretive resource users draw on when deciding whether to maintain, revise, or entirely rebuild their digital selves. Related research cited in the paper reinforces the point, from studies showing that Instagram selfies with heavy filters attract fewer likes to work demonstrating that adolescents delete outdated posts and edit photographs to negotiate personal and social norms.

The authors are careful about limits. The convenience sample of younger, East Asian adults limits generalizability, the survey did not probe how individuals actually interpreted specific feedback signals, and algorithmic conditions were excluded from the statistical models. Still, the practical implications are tangible: the results suggest value in cultivating users’ ability to read feedback critically, recognize audience expectations, and evaluate the consequences of visual self-presentation. As visual communication increasingly displaces text as the default language of online life, understanding the reflexive loop between identity, audience, and image becomes not just an academic curiosity but a form of everyday literacy—one that this study maps with unusual statistical clarity.

Subject of Research: Statistical relationships between social media self-presentation, feedback-driven identity, adaptive self-reconstruction, and visual communication and audience awareness

Article Title: Agents’ dynamic self-presentation in relation to visual communication and audience awareness on social media

Article References: Wu, M.-H., & Liao, Y.-Q. (2026). Agents’ dynamic self-presentation in relation to visual communication and audience awareness on social media. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45587. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45587

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45587

Keywords: social media, self-presentation, visual communication, audience awareness, structuration theory, online identity, Giddens, Goffman, feedback loops, survey research, structural equation modeling, Heliyon

The research team drew on the 2022 Micro-Entrepreneurship Survey, a nationally representative instrument developed jointly by Chile’s National Institute of Statistics and the Ministry of Economy, Development, and Tourism. The survey targets owners of economic units employing fewer than ten workers and uses a sophisticated sampling framework built on the 2017 National Population and Housing Census, with geographic stratification designed to capture the spatial distribution of labor market activity across the country. From an initial pool of roughly 3,021 women entrepreneurs surveyed, the researchers constructed an analytical sample of 842 women who reported using part of their business earnings for household consumption and reported positive income, yielding a dataset well suited to studying the intersection of entrepreneurship and economic dependency.

Methodologically, the study is notable for how rigorously it handles the survey’s complex design. Rather than treating the 842 observations as independent draws, the authors incorporated stratification, clustering, and unequal selection probabilities into their regression models. Survey weights, related to the inverse of each unit’s inclusion probability, allowed sample observations to represent the broader population of Chilean women micro-entrepreneurs, while a design-based sandwich estimator produced standard errors that account for correlation among observations within the same primary sampling unit. The researchers modeled two outcomes separately: the logarithm of annual net business profit and the logarithm of gross annual entrepreneurial income. Explanatory variables included weekly hours devoted to the business, monthly expenditure on merchandise and supplies, daily hours of unpaid domestic and caregiving work, age, education, business location, region, and reported income changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Model adequacy was verified through residual diagnostics, generalized variance inflation factors, and design-adjusted Wald tests, all of which indicated no serious violations of the statistical assumptions.

The headline finding is a negative association between unpaid work and gross entrepreneurial income. Each additional daily hour devoted to unpaid domestic and caregiving activities was associated with roughly 3.9 percent lower gross income, a result statistically significant at the ten percent level. Interestingly, the same association did not reach significance for net profit, suggesting that unpaid responsibilities may constrain women’s capacity to generate revenue, through reduced customer contact, shorter production time, and interrupted business continuity, more than they affect the income remaining after expenses. The authors interpret this through the lens of Gendered Institutions Theory, which holds that social institutions are not gender-neutral but systematically assign caregiving and domestic production to women, shaping economic outcomes long before any individual business decision is made.

By contrast, the variables that measured direct business engagement showed strong, consistent positive associations with both income measures. Each additional weekly hour dedicated to the micro-enterprise was linked to approximately 1.7 percent higher net income and 2.4 percent higher gross income. A one percent increase in expenditure on merchandise and supplies was associated with a 0.23 percent rise in net income and a 0.31 percent rise in gross income. These coefficients, the authors caution, represent conditional associations rather than causal effects; profitable businesses may also demand more hours and inputs, creating a potentially bidirectional relationship. Still, the pattern underscores that time and productive investment are the currencies of micro-enterprise success, precisely the resources that unpaid care work depletes.

Education emerged as another powerful correlate. Compared with women who had not completed basic education, those with basic education showed gross income roughly 75 percent higher, while secondary and technical education were associated with increases of about 74 and 78 percent respectively, and university education with a smaller but still notable advantage. The educational gradient likely operates through financial literacy, managerial capacity, opportunity recognition, and access to formal networks, although the authors warn that education may also proxy for unobserved advantages such as family background and accumulated assets. Age told a subtler story: women aged 25 to 34 earned significantly higher net income than those aged 65 or older, while the 45 to 54 group showed marginally higher gross income, but most age coefficients were not significant once business and socioeconomic characteristics were accounted for.

Where a business operates mattered considerably. Women running their ventures from premises outside the home earned about 88 percent higher net income and 81 percent higher gross income than those selling at customers’ premises, and street-based vendors also showed substantially higher net income. The authors suggest that a dedicated commercial location facilitates customer access, visibility, regular hours, and a clearer separation between productive and domestic spheres. Conversely, home-based businesses may suffer from space constraints and constant interruptions from household duties, a pattern that resonates with the finding on unpaid work and illustrates how women’s businesses are often adapted around caregiving obligations rather than organized around market opportunity.

The study also documented stark territorial and pandemic-related disparities. Relative to businesses in northern Chile, net income was significantly lower in every other macro-region, with adjusted differences ranging from about 26 percent in the central zone to 46 percent in the north-central regions. For gross income, the penalties concentrated in the Metropolitan and Southern regions. Businesses whose owners reported income declines during the COVID-19 pandemic earned roughly 33 percent less in net terms and 43 percent less in gross terms than those reporting increases, consistent with evidence that small and informal firms across Latin America lacked the financial reserves and digital capacity to weather the crisis. Notably, neither being a secondary household provider nor founding a business in response to the pandemic showed a significant association with income, leading the authors to argue that economic dependency is too multidimensional, involving control over resources, income stability, and decision-making power, to be captured by a single binary indicator.

The policy implications are far-reaching. The authors argue that conventional entrepreneurship training and microcredit, while valuable, will remain insufficient if women continue to shoulder a disproportionate share of unpaid care. They point to complementary measures such as affordable childcare, support for caring for dependent family members, redistribution of unpaid labor within households, and access to dedicated business premises. Evidence from the region supports this integrated approach: experimental programs in Chile combining financing with support have raised entrepreneurial profits and business continuity, while training and technical assistance for women entrepreneurs in Peru produced growth rates exceeding 15 percent two years after implementation. Because the study is cross-sectional and observational, its coefficients describe associations rather than proven causes, and the authors call for longitudinal data incorporating household finances, caregiving arrangements, business formality, and access to credit. But the core message is difficult to ignore: in Chile’s micro-enterprise economy, the gender profit gap is not simply a story of ambition or skill. It is a story of hours, who spends them building a business, and who spends them, invisibly and uncompensated, holding a household together.

Subject of Research: Econometric analysis of how unpaid domestic work, education, business location, and regional factors relate to income among women micro-entrepreneurs in Chile

Article Title: Econometric analysis of the micro-entrepreneurship, gender and economic dependency in Chile

Article References: Lay-Raby, N., de la Fuente-Mella, H., & Ríos-Vásquez, G. (2026). Econometric analysis of the micro-entrepreneurship, gender and economic dependency in Chile. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45570. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45570

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45570

Keywords: micro-entrepreneurship, Chile, gender inequality, unpaid work, caregiving, economic dependency, survey-weighted regression, women entrepreneurs, informal economy, COVID-19, Latin America, Heliyon

The research, conducted by Francis Gbefo and Phanuel Yao Klogo at the University of Ghana, is notable for its unusually rigorous design. Rather than comparing rice varieties grown on different farms under different conditions, the team grew all four genotypes side by side in the same field at the Soil and Irrigation Research Center in Kpong, receiving identical fertilizer and water. This head-to-head setup matters enormously in nutritional studies, because soil chemistry, rainfall, and postharvest handling can each shift a grain’s mineral content dramatically. By holding the environment constant, the researchers could isolate differences attributable to the plants themselves, or at least to the combination of genetics and processing.

The four contenders represented two distinct strands of Ghanaian rice agriculture. CRI-Amankwatia and CRI-Dartey are improved aromatic varieties released by the Crops Research Institute in Fumesua, Kumasi, products of a national breeding effort aimed at competing with imported rice on quality and aroma. Ex-Baika, an aromatic landrace, and Ex-Viono, a brown rice, are traditional varieties maintained by farmers in the Coastal Savannah, widely cultivated but nutritionally under-characterized in the scientific literature. The experiment used a randomized complete block design with three field replicates per genotype, plots measuring four by three meters, and a standardized fertilization regime of 90 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare split between transplanting and panicle initiation, alongside uniform phosphorus and potassium applications.

At harvest, the grains were dried to a narrow moisture window of roughly 11.5 to 12.5 percent before milling, ensuring that every sample entered analysis under comparable conditions. Each field replicate was milled separately with a Satake rice mill, and milling recoveries ranged from 70 percent for CRI-Amankwatia down to 65 percent for Ex-Viono. Here the study made a deliberate and consequential choice: while Ex-Baika was milled to polished white rice like the improved varieties, Ex-Viono was processed as brown rice, its bran layer retained in keeping with its traditional form. That decision would prove central to interpreting the results, because rice minerals are concentrated precisely in those outer layers that polishing removes.

The laboratory work followed standardized Association of Official Analytical Chemists methods. Proximate composition, meaning moisture, crude fat, crude fiber, ash, crude protein, and carbohydrate, was determined gravimetrically and by Kjeldahl digestion, with protein calculated using the conventional nitrogen-to-protein conversion factor of 6.25. Minerals were quantified by atomic absorption spectrophotometry after acid digestion, with calibration curves showing coefficients of determination of at least 0.999. Every measurement was performed in technical triplicate on each of three biological replicates, and the data passed formal tests of normality and variance homogeneity before analysis of variance. The authors candidly note one limitation: certified reference materials and recovery studies were not available, so independent verification of the mineral measurements was not possible.

The proximate results revealed a grain dominated by carbohydrate, as expected, but with meaningful genotype-specific differences. Protein ranged from 7.41 percent in CRI-Dartey to 8.37 percent in Ex-Viono, a spread that places the Ghanaian varieties at or above levels reported for newly released rice in Ethiopia and Benin. Crude fiber varied from 0.61 to 0.78 percent, again peaking in Ex-Viono, while fat spanned 0.63 to 0.71 percent and ash, the total mineral residue after incineration at 600 degrees Celsius, climbed from 0.43 percent in CRI-Amankwatia to 0.74 percent in Ex-Viono. The researchers are careful to stress that these compositional differences describe the grain’s chemistry; the study did not measure fiber functionality, glycemic response, or any physiological effect, so no health claims can be drawn directly from the numbers.

The mineral data told the more striking story. Potassium was the most abundant element in every genotype, ranging from 112.27 milligrams per 100 grams in CRI-Dartey to 125.16 in Ex-Viono, followed by magnesium at 37.38 to 41.22 milligrams per 100 grams. Calcium and sodium were lower but still significantly different among genotypes, with Ex-Viono recording 4.51 and 13.08 milligrams per 100 grams respectively. Among the micronutrients, manganese was the lone exception to the pattern, statistically indistinguishable across all four varieties at roughly 2.3 to 2.4 milligrams per 100 grams. Iron and zinc, however, differed sharply: Ex-Viono delivered 2.77 milligrams of iron and 2.16 milligrams of zinc per 100 grams, roughly double the iron and nearly double the zinc found in the two improved varieties, with Ex-Baika occupying an intermediate position. Given that iron and zinc deficiencies affect hundreds of millions of people across sub-Saharan Africa, a staple grain that accumulates twice the micronutrient load is not a trivial finding.

Yet the authors urge caution in attributing Ex-Viono’s mineral advantage to genetics alone. Because Ex-Viono was analyzed as brown rice while the other three genotypes were polished, the mineral-rich bran and germ tissues remained in the sample, and decades of research show that elements such as iron, zinc, and magnesium are unevenly distributed within the grain, concentrated in the outer layers that milling strips away. The study therefore cannot disentangle the effect of processing from the effect of genotype, a confound the researchers acknowledge explicitly. Environmental factors, including soil pH, nutrient availability, and redox conditions in the calcic vertisol at Kpong, further complicate any purely genetic interpretation. What the data do establish is a valuable baseline: under identical field conditions and documented processing, these landraces accumulate substantially more of several essential minerals than the improved cultivars currently promoted for their agronomic and aromatic qualities.

The broader context gives the findings their urgency. Ghanaian consumers have long preferred imported rice, citing perceived superiority in appearance, cleanliness, and cooking quality, and market dominance by foreign brands reinforces that preference. National programs, from the National Rice Development Strategy to Planting for Food and Jobs, along with partners such as the Japan International Cooperation Agency and the Coalition for African Rice Development, have pushed to expand domestic production and improve grain quality. Demont and Ndour, whose work on African rice value chains the authors cite, have argued that upgrading the quality of domestic genotypes is essential for market competitiveness. Nutritional characterization of the kind performed here supplies a missing piece of that puzzle, identifying genetic resources that breeders could draw upon to combine high yield and consumer appeal with superior mineral density.

The study’s authors frame their landraces as candidates for future breeding programs, and the genetic literature supports that optimism: genome-wide association studies have identified loci governing mineral accumulation in rice grain, and comparative work across Asia and Africa has repeatedly documented meaningful diversity between landraces and hybrid varieties. The researchers themselves flag the next steps. Their results come from a single site and one season’s conditions, so multi-location trials with greater replication are needed to account for genotype-by-environment interactions before breeding decisions are made. They also recommend integrating nutritional quality with agronomic traits such as yield, disease resistance, adaptability, and consumer preference, since a nutritionally superior variety that farmers will not grow or consumers will not buy helps no one. For now, the message is clear and quietly provocative: the old varieties Ghana’s farmers never abandoned may hold exactly the nutritional assets the country’s rice sector needs to compete, provided science and market strategy can bring them together.

Subject of Research: Comparative nutritional and mineral profiling of rice landraces and improved genotypes grown in Ghana

Article Title: Comparative nutritional profiling of selected rice landraces and improved genotypes grown in Ghana

Article References: Gbefo, F., & Klogo, P. Y. (2026). Comparative nutritional profiling of selected rice landraces and improved genotypes grown in Ghana. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45552. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45552

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: rice, landraces, Ghana, mineral composition, iron, zinc, proximate analysis, food security, crop breeding, nutrition, agriculture, Heliyon

The study, conducted by Sayed M. Ismail, Faris Allehyani, Khaled Ahmed Abdel-Al Ibrahim, and Mohamad Ahmad Saleem Khasawneh, recruited 60 undergraduate English majors aged 20 to 29 at a Saudi university, all screened as intermediate-level learners using the Oxford Quick Placement Test. Participants came from two intact sections of the same academic writing course taught by the same experienced instructor. One section of 30 students received twelve weeks of process-based writing instruction supplemented with Grammarly during drafting and revision; the other 30 completed an identical syllabus, task sequence, and revision routine without any AI-generated feedback. Crucially, the researchers standardized nearly everything else: the same ten argumentative writing tasks, the same three-draft cycle per task, the same deadlines, testing conditions, and assessment rubrics.

The theoretical scaffolding behind the experiment is as interesting as the results. Rather than treating Grammarly as a generic digital add-on, the authors framed automated feedback through three interlocking lenses: self-determination theory, which holds that learners persist when tools support competence, autonomy, and meaningful participation; social-cognitive and self-regulated learning theory, which emphasizes goal setting, monitoring, and strategic adjustment; and feedback theory, which insists that feedback only has value when learners understand it, judge its relevance, and convert it into revision action. In this model, Grammarly’s suggestions act as revision cues that can trigger a self-regulatory sequence: a learner notices recurring article errors, sets a goal to reduce them, checks later drafts, and reflects on whether the strategy worked.

The quantitative results were striking across all four measured outcomes. Using linear mixed-effects models that accounted for repeated measurements within each learner, the team found that the Grammarly-supported group improved significantly more than the control group from pre-test to post-test. Writing quality, scored on a 20-point rubric covering grammatical and lexical accuracy, fluency and coherence, and text structure, rose by 5.42 points in the experimental group versus 1.47 points in the control group, a differential gain of 3.95 points with a large standardized effect size of 1.77. Motivation climbed 13.50 points against 4.40, feedback utilization rose 4.44 points against 0.93, and self-regulated learning strategies jumped 13.90 points against 2.23. All four time-by-condition interactions were statistically significant.

Behavioral evidence from draft-to-draft comparisons reinforced the test scores. Trained raters, working independently and achieving strong inter-rater agreement, scored how accurately, completely, deeply, and consistently learners incorporated available feedback into successive drafts. In the Grammarly group, 77 percent reached the highest rubric level for accurate incorporation of feedback without distorting intended meaning, compared with 43 percent of controls. Eighty percent of the AI-supported students addressed all feedback points versus 60 percent of controls, 70 percent made revisions that went beyond surface-level correction versus 50 percent, and 85 percent maintained improvements across later drafts versus 65 percent. The pattern suggests that immediate automated cues did not merely decorate the texts; they changed what students actually did between drafts.

Semi-structured interviews with the experimental group added texture and caution in equal measure. Participants reported that Grammarly was easy to access and use outside class, and that it sharpened their awareness of grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and word choice. Immediate feedback supported revision while writing rather than after the fact. But the students were far from uncritical. Some found suggestions overly general, contextually inappropriate, or inadequate for complex sentence structures, and they consistently wanted more help with content development and argument organization than any sentence-level tool can provide. Notably, they credited their teacher with helping them decide when to accept, modify, or reject automated suggestions, underscoring that writer agency remained central to the intervention’s design.

That design deliberately constrained what Grammarly could do. Students used the platform’s grammar, spelling, punctuation, clarity, concision, word-choice, and style functions through its web editor and Microsoft Word integration, but generative rewriting, text-generation prompts, plagiarism detection, and citation generation were switched off. Before the intervention began, the experimental group received two 45-minute orientation sessions teaching them to evaluate suggestions against their intended meaning rather than accept them automatically. The researchers were explicit that the treatment targeted automated written feedback and learner-initiated revision, not AI-generated composition, a distinction that matters as institutions grapple with how generative AI reshapes academic writing.

The authors are equally candid about the limits of their evidence. Because participants belonged to pre-existing class sections, individual randomization was impossible, and instructional condition was perfectly aligned with class membership, meaning class-level confounding cannot be ruled out. The experimental group actually started with slightly lower scores on all four outcomes, which the longitudinal models incorporated but which cannot substitute for randomization. Novelty is another live concern: learners knew they were using a new AI tool, and prior research has shown that perceived novelty can inflate motivational responses. The motivation and self-regulation findings rest on self-report questionnaires, so the researchers interpret them alongside the harder performance and behavioral data, and they caution that no delayed post-test was administered to check whether gains persisted.

Despite those caveats, the convergence across evidence streams is what gives the study its force. Writing quality and feedback utilization, measured by independent raters on matched prompts without platform assistance, moved in the same direction as the self-reported motivation and self-regulation gains, and the interview accounts of immediate revision and contextual judgment complemented the numbers rather than contradicting them. The study was not designed to test whether feedback use statistically mediates writing improvement, so the proposed pathway from automated cues to self-regulation to better texts remains a theoretically informed interpretation rather than a demonstrated causal chain. Future work, the authors argue, should employ randomized designs, larger and more diverse samples, delayed assessments, and explicit mediation models, while comparing Grammarly with other AI writing tools.

The practical takeaway resists both hype and dismissal. Automated feedback, embedded in a disciplined process-writing routine with teacher guidance, appears to give second-language writers more opportunities to notice problems, revise strategically, and experience visible progress, which in turn may feed motivation and self-regulation. But the same students who benefited most also flagged the tool’s blind spots at the level of argument, audience, and organization, the dimensions where human instruction remains irreplaceable. As universities worldwide debate the role of AI in the writing classroom, this Saudi experiment suggests a middle path: treat platforms like Grammarly as supplementary revision resources within structured instruction, teach learners to judge suggestions critically, and keep teachers firmly in the loop for everything that lies beyond the sentence.

Subject of Research: Effects of Grammarly-supported AI writing instruction on EFL learners' writing quality, motivation, feedback utilization, and self-regulated learning strategies

Article Title: Grammarly-supported AI writing instruction in a Saudi EFL context: Motivation, writing quality, feedback utilization, and self-regulated learning strategies

Article References: Ismail, S. M., Allehyani, F., Ahmed Abdel-Al Ibrahim, K., & Khasawneh, M. A. S. (2026). Grammarly-supported AI writing instruction in a Saudi EFL context: Motivation, writing quality, feedback utilization, and self-regulated learning strategies. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45557. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45557

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45557

Keywords: Grammarly, AI feedback, EFL writing, self-regulated learning, writing motivation, automated writing evaluation, Saudi Arabia, process writing, feedback utilization, quasi-experimental study, second language acquisition, Heliyon

The research team, led by Juan Miguel Salazar-Partida, Antonio Burgos-García, Mónica Márquez-Pinedo, and Purificación Pérez-García, surveyed 1,117 students enrolled in undergraduate teacher education programs. Of these, 816 were studying at eight Spanish universities affiliated with Andalusian institutions including the Universidad de Granada and Universidad de Sevilla, while 301 were enrolled at the Universidad de Guadalajara and the Escuela Normal Superior de Jalisco in Mexico. Most participants were women, reflecting the well-documented feminization of the teaching workforce, and roughly two-thirds were between 17 and 20 years old. Students came from Early Childhood, Primary, General, Indigenous, and Secondary Education degree tracks, and about 58 percent reported an urban background.

To capture the ethical dimension of professional formation, the researchers used a 49-item questionnaire assessing professional teaching ethics across six analytical axes: teaching vocation, personal-professional principles, ethical commitment to teaching, responsibility for student training, ethics as an evaluative component, and processes for evaluating teaching ethics. Responses were recorded on a four-point Likert-type scale. The instrument demonstrated strong psychometric properties, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging from .859 to .946 across the six axes and reaching .969 for the full questionnaire. A confirmatory factor analysis conducted on a subsample of 818 participants produced favorable fit indices, including a Comparative Fit Index of .959 and a root mean square error of approximation of .038, supporting the six-factor structure used in subsequent analyses.

The methodological heart of the study lies in its dual use of unsupervised machine learning. Rather than relying on a single clustering technique, the team applied both K-Means and Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) to standardized scores across the six axes. K-Means partitions data by minimizing distances to cluster centroids, while GMM allows for more flexible, probabilistically overlapping groupings by modeling the data as a mixture of Gaussian distributions. Candidate solutions with two to six clusters were compared using internal validation indices such as the Silhouette coefficient, the Calinski-Harabasz index, the Davies-Bouldin index, and the Dunn index for K-Means, and the Akaike and Bayesian information criteria for GMM. Because the validation criteria did not converge on a single best solution, the researchers retained a three-cluster solution as a descriptive representation, acknowledging a two-cluster alternative as plausible.

The resulting profiles followed a consistent ordinal pattern in both approaches. The higher-endorsement profile, comprising 855 participants under K-Means and 497 under GMM, showed positive standardized means across all six axes, with the strongest scores appearing in evaluative dimensions of teaching ethics. The moderate-endorsement profile occupied an intermediate position, with slightly negative scores under K-Means and a more nuanced mixed pattern under GMM, where vocation and personal-professional principles were marginally positive while evaluative components were slightly negative. A lower-endorsement configuration also emerged in both solutions, though with important caveats: under K-Means it contained only 13 participants, or about 1.2 percent of the sample, and its recovery across resampling analyses was inconsistent, leading the authors to treat it as an exploratory low-prevalence response pattern rather than a stable population subgroup.

Stability testing reinforced this caution. The K-Means solution showed high agreement across repeated 80 percent subsamples, with a mean Adjusted Rand Index of .956, but greater sensitivity to initialization. The GMM solution proved remarkably stable, with a mean Adjusted Rand Index of .997 across repeated initializations, although it became more sensitive as covariance regularization increased. Dimensionality-reduction visualizations using t-SNE and principal component analysis, the latter explaining 83.6 percent of the variance in two dimensions, provided descriptive confirmation of the ordered but overlapping structure of the profiles. The authors emphasize that these visualizations serve as interpretive aids rather than formal validation criteria.

Beyond the profiles themselves, the study examined whether membership varied across sociodemographic, academic, and institutional characteristics using chi-square tests with Cramér’s V as a measure of association, corrected for multiple comparisons using the Benjamini-Hochberg false discovery rate procedure. Five contextual variables emerged as significant in both clustering approaches: gender, Indigenous-group membership, degree program, institution, and country. Access grade was significant only under K-Means, while academic year was significant only under GMM. Age group, urban or rural environment, and high-school type showed no significant associations in either solution. The authors stress that these are exploratory associations, not causal determinants, but they suggest that ethical-professional orientations are shaped, at least in part, by the educational and sociocultural contexts in which future teachers are trained.

The findings arrive at a moment of renewed international attention to teacher ethics. Earlier surveys of higher education found that only about 9 percent of teacher education curricula included courses with professional ethics content, a figure that underscored how often ethics has been marginalized in favor of subject instruction and pedagogical technique. The past several years have seen a counter-movement, marked by the publication of major handbooks on teacher ethos and values education and by systematic reviews of ethics in teacher preparation. The present study adds empirical weight to that shift by showing that ethical-professional dispositions vary measurably among students entering the profession, and that this variation cannot be assumed away by the belief that teaching attracts people who are good by nature.

The researchers frame their contribution within an applied, relational understanding of professional teaching ethics, drawing on the Ibero-American tradition of ética profesional docente and the framework of Torquemada and Loredo. Within this view, ethics is expressed not only in abstract moral reasoning but in vocational orientation, respectful conduct, professional commitment, responsibility toward students, and openness to evaluation. The identified profiles, the authors argue, are not moral classifications of individual students but empirical configurations of self-reported values, dispositions, attitudes, and commitments. This distinction matters: the study did not directly assess ethical reasoning, moral judgment, or observed conduct, and its cross-sectional, self-report design precludes causal or developmental conclusions.

The practical implications are nonetheless significant. If roughly a quarter to nearly half of future teachers, depending on the clustering method, fall into moderate or lower-endorsement profiles, then teacher education programs cannot treat ethics as an incidental by-product of training. The authors call for explicit, structured integration of ethical content into initial teacher education, grounded in the sociocultural realities of professional practice and attentive to the diversity of students’ starting points. They also point toward future research using longitudinal designs, qualitative interviews, and extensions linking professional ethics to deontological standards and competence-based frameworks for civic and democratic participation. As education systems worldwide grapple with teacher shortages, quality, and public trust, this study offers a data-driven reminder that the ethical formation of teachers is not automatic, and that building it deliberately may be one of the most consequential investments a teacher education program can make.

Subject of Research: Ethical-professional profiles of prospective teachers in undergraduate education degree programs in Spain and Mexico

Article Title: Analysis of professional teaching ethics among prospective teachers enrolled in undergraduate education degree programs

Article References: Salazar-Partida, J. M., Burgos-García, A., Márquez-Pinedo, M., & Pérez-García, P. (2026). Analysis of professional teaching ethics among prospective teachers enrolled in undergraduate education degree programs. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45525. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45525

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45525

Keywords: teacher ethics, prospective teachers, teacher education, K-Means clustering, Gaussian Mixture Models, professional values, teaching vocation, ethical commitment, Spain, Mexico, Heliyon, machine learning

The patient’s clinical journey began in January 2021, when he presented to an outpatient clinic with urinary frequency and progressive difficulty urinating. His initial serum total PSA measured 5.22 micrograms per liter, only modestly above the conventional 4 microgram-per-liter threshold that typically triggers concern. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed abnormal lesions in the peripheral zone of both sides of the prostate, and transrectal biopsy confirmed the suspicion: prostate adenocarcinoma with a Gleason score of 9 (4+5), one of the most aggressive grades assigned to this disease. The clinical stage was classified as T3aN0M0, indicating locally advanced disease that had not yet spread to lymph nodes or distant organs. Because of COVID-19 pandemic disruptions, radical surgery was postponed, and the patient instead began combined androgen blockade using bicalutamide and goserelin, a hormonal regimen designed to starve the cancer of the testosterone it craves.

Two years later, in February 2023, the patient was admitted with worsening urinary symptoms. Repeat MRI showed an enlarged prostate with lesions essentially unchanged from prior imaging, and a bone density scan detected no abnormalities. After a multidisciplinary team evaluation, he underwent laparoscopic radical prostatectomy in March 2023 without complications. Postoperative pathology reconfirmed the high-grade adenocarcinoma, and endocrine therapy with bicalutamide and goserelin continued. By June 2023, follow-up labs showed the total PSA had fallen to 0.86 micrograms per liter, while serum testosterone was undetectable. On paper, everything suggested the treatment was working: the primary tumor had been removed, hormonal therapy had chemically castrated the patient, and the biomarker that defines prostate cancer activity had collapsed to near-baseline levels.

Then, in August 2023, the picture shattered. The patient noticed a soybean-sized mass on his penis, accompanied by urinary frequency, urgency, painful urination, and five to six nighttime bathroom trips. Physical examination revealed a firm mass roughly three centimeters long within the penile corpus cavernosum, the spongy erectile tissue. Doppler ultrasonography identified a solid lesion measuring 26 by 16 by 11 millimeters in the left corpus cavernosum, suspicious for malignancy. MRI confirmed a solid mass with a high probability of metastatic tumor. Critically, his serum PSA at that moment was just 2.58 micrograms per liter, well within a range many clinicians would consider reassuring. He underwent resection of the penile lesion on August 24, 2023, and histopathology revealed poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma with intravascular tumor thrombus, evidence that cancer cells had already invaded blood vessels.

Immunohistochemical staining settled the question of origin. The tumor cells showed diffuse positive expression of androgen receptor, PSA, and P504s, also known as alpha-methylacyl-CoA racemase, a molecular fingerprint characteristic of prostate adenocarcinoma. The diagnosis was confirmed: penile metastasis from prostate cancer, an event with an estimated incidence of only 0.3 to 0.5 percent among prostate cancer patients. By October 2023, the disease had exploded. MRI detected multiple masses in both corpora cavernosa, the right ischium, and the left pubic ramus. Contrast-enhanced CT revealed scattered solid nodules in both lungs, a lesion in the right lobe of the thyroid, and multiple growing liver metastases, the largest measuring about 20 millimeters. His PSA had climbed to 13.39 micrograms per liter, and the team concluded he had relapsed with castration-resistant disease.

The authors place this case within a broader biological framework that may explain the paradox of metastasis without high PSA. In metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, low PSA levels often signal neuroendocrine differentiation, a process in which tumor cells undergo what researchers call lineage plasticity. Under the selective pressure of continuous hormonal therapy, adenocarcinoma cells accumulate genomic alterations such as RB1 and TP53 mutations and epigenomic changes including DNA methylation and EZH2 overexpression. The splicing regulator SRRM4 induces alternative splicing that produces a non-functional variant of the neuronal repressor REST, while upregulation of N-MYC, PEG10, and transcription factors like BRN2, SOX2, and SOX11 grants the cells stem-like and neuron-like properties. The cells shift toward a mesenchymal state, marked by elevated vimentin and SNAIL, suppressed androgen receptor signaling and its downstream genes including PSA, and increased neuroendocrine markers such as synaptophysin, chromogranin A, and neuron-specific enolase. The result is a tumor that proliferates aggressively but no longer manufactures the very protein clinicians use to track it.

The authors acknowledge an important limitation: their penile tumor specimen was not stained for neuroendocrine markers, so the evidence for this mechanism in the present case remains indirect. Still, the anatomical route of spread is clearer. Roughly 75 percent of metastatic penile cancer originates from adjacent genitourinary and pelvic organs, chiefly the bladder at 28.6 percent and the prostate at 27.9 percent. About 90 percent of secondary penile tumors disseminate through veins and lymphatics, with the remainder arriving via direct extension or iatrogenic implantation. In this patient, retrograde venous or lymphatic dissemination is the most likely mechanism, supported by the locally advanced initial stage, the intravascular tumor thrombus seen on histopathology, the corpus cavernosum involvement, and the rapid systemic dissemination that followed.

The clinical trajectory after the penile diagnosis was relentless. In November 2023, PSA reached 32.5 micrograms per liter and PET-CT identified extensive systemic metastases. By January 2024, the patient required a suprapubic cystostomy to manage urinary obstruction, and PSA had risen to 39.60 micrograms per liter. Treatment escalated through abiraterone and then enzalutamide, but by April 2024 PSA had surged to 253.01 micrograms per liter, and by late June it hit 577.47. Testosterone remained below detection, confirming that the cancer no longer depended on androgens. Laboratory values painted a picture of systemic decline: low potassium, low albumin, anemia with hemoglobin of 91 grams per liter, and elevated inflammatory markers including C-reactive protein at 71.38 milligrams per liter. Androgen deprivation therapy offered no benefit, so the team transitioned to metronomic therapy with opioid pain control. The patient died in August 2024, 43 months after his initial diagnosis and just 12 months after the penile metastasis was detected.

Survival statistics for this rare complication are grim across the literature. A 2006 review by Cherian and colleagues collected 372 cases of secondary penile tumors, 125 of them from prostate cancer, and found most patients died within a year of presentation. A 2023 update by Landen and colleagues added 72 new cases documented between 2006 and 2021, reporting a median cancer-specific survival of 14.3 months for prostate primaries. Approximately 41 percent of patients with prostate-derived penile metastasis die within six months of diagnosis, and those who develop malignant priapism fare even worse. Metastasis-directed therapies such as surgical excision, radiotherapy, and stereotactic body radiation can achieve favorable local PSA responses and relieve symptoms, but no study has demonstrated a meaningful overall survival benefit. For patients whose low PSA reflects neuroendocrine differentiation, current guidance suggests prioritizing chemotherapy with agents like docetaxel or cabazitaxel, platinum-based regimens, or emerging targeted therapies rather than continuing androgen deprivation alone.

The takeaway from this case is a call for diagnostic humility. The authors recommend that any patient presenting with penile complaints and a history of prostate malignancy should be suspected of harboring penile metastasis, even when bone disease appears controlled and PSA sits in the low range under hormonal therapy. Patients with high-grade, locally advanced prostate cancer and atypical features deserve heightened vigilance. Beyond conventional PSA testing, the report advocates complete physical examination, imaging with MRI or, preferably, gallium-68 PSMA PET/CT, the most sensitive modality for detecting prostate cancer metastasis, and additional serum biomarkers. Notably, this patient never received PSMA PET/CT because it was not part of routine workup at the treating institution, and the authors concede its absence may have allowed additional metastatic lesions to escape detection. As prostate cancer treatment extends survival for millions worldwide, this case stands as a vivid reminder that the disease can rewrite its own molecular identity, slipping beneath the biomarker radar precisely when clinicians feel most confident it has been defeated.

Subject of Research: Penile metastasis of prostate cancer occurring with low serum PSA levels

Article Title: Prostate cancer metastasis to the penis with low serum prostate specific antigen level: A case report

Article References: Wang, Z., Lai, Y., Wu, H., Zhang, J., Liang, H., & Wang, X. (2026). Prostate cancer metastasis to the penis with low serum prostate specific antigen level: A case report. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45456. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45456

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45456

Keywords: prostate cancer, penile metastasis, PSA, castration-resistant prostate cancer, neuroendocrine differentiation, androgen deprivation therapy, PSMA PET/CT, case report, lineage plasticity, immunohistochemistry, Gleason score, Heliyon

Abdominal cocoon syndrome is a condition in which a fibrocollagenous membrane gradually encases loops of the small bowel, constricting them into a clustered mass that behaves like a mechanical bottleneck for digestion. The result is recurrent or complete small bowel obstruction, one of the most common surgical emergencies encountered worldwide. Obstruction of the small intestine is usually caused by postoperative adhesions, hernias, malignancy, or inflammatory bowel disease, but cocoon syndrome stands apart because it can strike patients who have never had abdominal surgery, a detail that makes clinicians far less likely to suspect it. The syndrome was first described in the medical literature in 1978, and its etiology remains poorly understood, though an inflammatory cascade is thought to stimulate fibroblast proliferation and collagen deposition, eventually producing the dense encapsulating layer that gives the disease its name.

The Tunisian patient’s history was notable precisely for its emptiness. He denied any prior abdominal surgery, peritoneal dialysis, abdominal trauma, appendicitis, gastrointestinal perforation, foreign-body ingestion, peptic ulcer disease, or inflammatory bowel disease. He took no chronic medications, including corticosteroids, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or opioids, and had no diabetes, hypertension, or autoimmune disorders. His family history was unremarkable for gastrointestinal disease or tuberculosis. On admission he appeared mildly dehydrated, with a distended, tympanic abdomen and diffuse tenderness but no signs of peritonitis. Laboratory tests showed mild leukocytosis of 13,000 cells per cubic millimeter, with otherwise normal electrolytes and inflammatory markers. Abdominal radiography revealed multiple air-fluid levels consistent with partial small bowel obstruction, prompting further imaging.

Contrast-enhanced computed tomography proved decisive. The scan demonstrated hydro-aeric distension of intestinal loops up to 57 millimeters in diameter, with progressive tapering in the right iliac fossa and moderate free fluid in the pelvis and left paracolic gutter. The characteristic finding, described in the literature as the cauliflower or cocoon sign, is a cluster of small bowel loops surrounded by a fibrotic sac, and the authors note that contrast-enhanced CT is considered the imaging modality of choice because of its ability to demonstrate this pattern. Even so, the diagnosis can remain elusive. Many cases in the published literature, including several in the review accompanying this report, were confirmed only during surgery, because the radiologic features are nonspecific and the syndrome itself is so rare that few radiologists or surgeons encounter it more than once in a career.

The patient was initially managed conservatively with nasogastric decompression, fluid resuscitation, and correction of electrolyte imbalance, a standard first-line approach for partial bowel obstruction. But his obstructive symptoms persisted after 48 hours, and the surgical team decided that exploratory laparotomy was indicated. Inside the abdomen, they found the small intestine encased within a dense, whitish fibrous membrane forming a cocoon-like sac. There was no mesenteric lymphadenopathy, no caseous nodules, and no purulent fluid, findings that helped argue against an infectious cause. The surgeons performed careful adhesiolysis, the deliberate freeing of adhesions, and total excision of the fibrotic capsule without bowel resection, because all loops were viable and regained peristalsis after release. Peritoneal fluid and membrane biopsies were sent for microbiological and histopathological evaluation, including acid-fast bacillus staining, culture, and adenosine deaminase assay, all of which came back negative for tuberculosis.

That tuberculosis work-up was not a formality. Secondary forms of abdominal cocoon syndrome are associated with peritoneal dialysis, tuberculosis, autoimmune diseases, and chronic infections, and the authors emphasize that clinicians evaluating recurrent small bowel obstruction should actively exclude tuberculous peritonitis, which can closely mimic the idiopathic form. They recommend a detailed tuberculosis history, chest imaging, and, when suspicion exists, targeted investigations such as ascitic or peritoneal fluid acid-fast bacillus smear, adenosine deaminase assay, culture, and molecular testing with CB-NAAT or GeneXpert. During surgery, representative peritoneal biopsy and fluid sampling for histopathology and microbiology are strongly recommended, because macroscopic appearance alone may not reliably exclude tuberculosis. In this case, histopathologic examination confirmed fibrocollagenous tissue without granulomatous inflammation, supporting an idiopathic diagnosis.

The postoperative course was swift. The patient was monitored for the return of bowel function, abdominal distension, and signs of infection, and oral intake resumed on postoperative day two after the passage of flatus. He received prophylactic antibiotics, ceftriaxone combined with metronidazole for 48 hours, along with analgesia, and was discharged on postoperative day four with normal bowel transit. At follow-up visits at two and six weeks he remained asymptomatic, and he expressed satisfaction with the outcome while providing written consent for publication of his clinical details and images. The authors report that early operative management of this syndrome generally results in excellent postoperative recovery and minimal recurrence, and their patient’s trajectory illustrates that point in practice.

To place the case in context, the team reviewed English-language literature on abdominal cocoon syndrome published between January 2015 and June 2024, searching PubMed and Google Scholar and including only single case reports and small case series with sufficient clinical detail. The synthesis, spanning cases from Pakistan, the United Kingdom, China, Greece, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Turkey, Kuwait, Morocco, India, Thailand, and Ethiopia, highlights that the syndrome predominantly affects young to middle-aged males from tropical and subtropical regions. Yet the collected cases also show the disease’s range of severity: some patients presented with straightforward obstruction, while others arrived with bowel perforation, internal fistulas, ischemic segments, or extensive small bowel necrosis. In a Thai series of three patients, one died, underscoring that delays in diagnosis can carry fatal consequences. Notably, the review also documents that idiopathic forms in middle-aged and older adults, like the Tunisian patient, are increasingly reported, even though the classic textbook portrait involves younger men.

Treatment remains an area of active debate. In early stages or in cases with intermittent symptoms, conservative management with bowel rest, hydration, nutritional support, and nasogastric decompression may be attempted. But when obstruction is complete or conservative measures fail, surgery is mandated, and the definitive procedure involves adhesiolysis and careful removal of the fibrous membrane encasing the intestine. There is growing interest in laparoscopic approaches, which offer reduced postoperative pain, faster recovery, and shorter hospital stays, and one case in the review achieved an excellent outcome with laparoscopic adhesiolysis. However, minimally invasive management is technically challenging because of dense adhesions and the risk of bowel injury, so case selection is crucial and conversion to open surgery may be required if safe dissection cannot be ensured. In the present case, the authors considered laparoscopy but deferred it because marked intestinal distension and dense adhesions on imaging made open laparotomy the safer approach. In patients with advanced liver cirrhosis or other comorbid conditions, perioperative morbidity is significantly heightened and approaches must be tailored accordingly.

The authors acknowledge the limits of the evidence base. No definitive pathophysiologic mechanism or molecular biomarker exists to distinguish idiopathic from secondary forms before surgery, CT sensitivity for early or partial disease is limited, and because the condition is so rare, treatment algorithms are largely derived from isolated case reports rather than comparative studies. Recurrence is exceptional but may occur when fibrotic tissue excision is incomplete or persistent inflammation promotes re-encapsulation, so the team advises structured follow-up with clinical evaluation at three and twelve months and abdominal imaging if symptoms return. Medical therapies aimed at modulating peritoneal fibrosis, including short courses of corticosteroids or tamoxifen, have been reported anecdotally but require validation, and the authors call for future multicenter registries to define optimal surveillance intervals and identify predictive factors for recurrence. Their central message for clinicians is straightforward: abdominal cocoon syndrome deserves a place on the differential diagnosis for any patient with recurrent or unexplained small bowel obstruction, especially those who have never undergone abdominal surgery, because timely recognition, careful bowel-preserving membrane excision, and structured postoperative monitoring can convert a potentially dangerous condition into one with an excellent outcome.

Subject of Research: Abdominal cocoon syndrome as a rare cause of small bowel obstruction

Article Title: Small bowel obstruction secondary to abdominal cocoon syndrome: Case report and review of the literature

Article References: Ben Ismail, I., Sghaier, M., Amari, R., Yaakoubi, J., Zenaidi, H., & Zoghlami, A. (2026). Small bowel obstruction secondary to abdominal cocoon syndrome: Case report and review of the literature. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45437. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45437

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45437

Keywords: abdominal cocoon syndrome, sclerosing encapsulating peritonitis, small bowel obstruction, case report, computed tomography, adhesiolysis, fibrous membrane, tuberculosis, general surgery, Heliyon, idiopathic peritoneal sclerosis, laparotomy

The logic behind the experiment is straightforward but compelling. Fish already supplies nearly 20 percent of the animal protein consumed by about 3.1 billion people worldwide, and fish protein is widely considered superior to that of meat or eggs because of its balanced essential amino acid composition, its payload of micronutrients, and its low burden of saturated fat. Yet fish remains underconsumed in many communities because it is perishable, spoils quickly, and its sensory properties put off some eaters, particularly young people. Bread, by contrast, is affordable, ubiquitous, and beloved in developing tropical countries, where cereal crops can contribute roughly 75 percent of total caloric intake. But bread is nutritionally lopsided: rich in carbohydrates and fiber, it falls short on protein and minerals, and its high carbohydrate load has been linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and colon cancer. Both the FDA and the WHO recognize bread as an effective vehicle for nutrient enrichment, making it an ideal carrier for a protein boost.

Silver carp, a fast-growing invasive species farmed extensively across Asia, was an obvious candidate. The research team purchased fresh fish averaging 1.92 kilograms from the Boro Bazar market in the Jashore district, filleted the animals, separated the flesh from bones and fins, minced it, dried it for 12 hours at 65 degrees Celsius in a hot air oven, and ground the dried mince into a powder that was stored at minus 20 degrees Celsius until use. They then prepared four bread formulations following a modified Stokić method: a control loaf made purely from refined wheat flour, and three experimental loaves in which 5, 10, or 15 percent of the wheat flour by weight was replaced with silver carp powder. Each 84-gram batch of flour-plus-powder was combined with salt, yeast, sugar, vegetable oil, and water, kneaded for 20 minutes, rested for 30 minutes at room temperature, shaped, and baked for about 20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius.

The nutritional results were striking and followed a clean dose-response pattern. Protein content climbed from 15.18 percent in the control bread to 18.51 percent at 5 percent substitution, 21.8 percent at 10 percent, and 24.60 percent at the 15 percent level. Lipid content rose in parallel, from 6.44 percent to 9.17 percent, as the fish powder—whose own lipid content has been reported at 13.65 percent—diluted the starch-rich flour. Carbohydrate, predictably, fell from 65.02 percent to 53.27 percent across the same range. Moisture content, hovering between 10.13 and 10.95 percent, did not vary significantly, and the authors note that such low moisture bodes well for shelf life, since food stability generally declines as moisture rises. Ash content, a proxy for total mineral content, stayed essentially flat at around 2.3 to 2.4 percent, an unexpected result that contrasts with some earlier studies using salmon or tilapia powders.

Energy values increased significantly with fortification, peaking at 394.50 kilocalories per 100 grams in the 10 percent loaf versus 378.76 in the control, driven by the denser protein and lipid contributions. But the most dramatic nutritional upgrade appeared in the amino acid analysis, performed with a Hitachi LA 8080 amino acid analyzer after acid hydrolysis of the samples. Total amino acids nearly doubled, from 11,346.41 milligrams per 100 grams in control bread to 20,588.98 milligrams per 100 grams in the 15 percent loaf. Methionine was the most abundant amino acid in every formulation, rising from 3,429.84 to 5,825.01 milligrams per 100 grams, while phenylalanine reached 5,217.79 milligrams and cystine climbed significantly above control levels. Valine was least abundant but still rose steadily with fish content. The authors note that tryptophan could not be measured because it is destroyed during acid hydrolysis, and that without performic acid oxidation the methionine and cystine values may be slightly underestimated—honest caveats that do not blunt the overall picture.

This amino acid enrichment matters because wheat flour is notoriously limited in essential amino acids, and fish protein carries a more optimal essential amino acid profile than plant proteins. Adequate intake of indispensable amino acids such as lysine and methionine is critical for childhood growth, cognitive development, immune function, and the prevention of stunting, while balanced amino acid nutrition in adults helps maintain muscle mass and metabolic health. In regions where protein-energy malnutrition and poor dietary diversity persist, fortifying a staple that people already eat every day with a cheap, locally available fish could be a cost-effective public health strategy. The researchers explicitly frame the fortified bread as a potential tool against malnutrition in developing regions, where silver carp aquaculture is already well established.

Mineral analysis by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry reinforced the case. Sodium more than doubled, from 5.33 to 11.57 milligrams per 100 grams, and calcium rose from 7.88 to 18.73 milligrams per 100 grams at the highest fortification level. Zinc increased from 1.95 to 2.89 milligrams and iron from 1.63 to 1.95 milligrams per 100 grams. Calcium plays essential roles in bone integrity and blood pressure regulation, and adequate intake has been associated with reduced risks of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy and lower LDL cholesterol. Just as importantly, the heavy metal screen was reassuring: cadmium, arsenic, copper, and lead all remained far below international safety limits, chromium stayed under the FAO/WHO guideline of 0.1 milligrams per 100 grams, and nickel, though elevated to 0.05 milligrams in some loaves, remained well within the tolerable daily intake of 0.3 milligrams per day.

Nutrition, however, is worthless if nobody eats the bread, and this is where the story gets nuanced. A sensory panel of fifty untrained but regular fish consumers, aged 22 to 40, rated the loaves on color, flavor, softness, chewiness, and overall acceptability on a ten-point scale. The control bread scored highest across all attributes, and sensory quality declined progressively as fish powder levels rose. The 5 percent loaf tracked the control closely, particularly in color and flavor, while the 10 percent loaf showed moderate reductions, mainly in chewiness and flavor. The 15 percent loaf fared worst, earning the lowest marks in every category, especially color and overall acceptability. Instrumental color measurement told a parallel story: lightness, redness, and yellowness values all fell with increasing fish content, producing a dark brown crumb at 15 percent substitution. The culprit is the Maillard reaction, in which reducing sugars react with amino acids, particularly lysine, during baking to form brown pigments and flavor compounds; higher protein content means more reactants and darker bread.

The pH of the loaves also shifted subtly toward neutrality with fish content, from 6.24 in the control to 6.37 at 15 percent substitution, a change the authors attribute to the buffering capacity of fish muscle proteins and their abundant alkaline amino acids such as lysine. A pH closer to neutral may even be gentler on the stomach for people with acid sensitivity. Taken together, the data point to a practical sweet spot: breads fortified with 5 to 10 percent silver carp powder scored nearly as well as plain bread in taste, aroma, texture, and overall acceptability while delivering substantially more protein, amino acids, and minerals. The authors suggest that 10 percent is the viable balance between functional benefit and consumer acceptance, and they recommend gradually introducing fish powder at levels that do not alter taste or texture, combined with consumer education and sensory-optimized product development.

The study is not without limitations, which the authors candidly acknowledge. No storage stability trials, microbial analyses, or lipid oxidation assessments were conducted, so the shelf-life behavior of the fortified bread remains unknown. Fish lipids are prone to rancidity, and how the loaf holds up over days of storage could determine whether the concept survives outside the laboratory. Still, the core finding stands: an abundant, low-value fish can be converted into a shelf-stable powder that transforms one of humanity’s most common foods into a significantly better protein source. As aquaculture expands and the search for sustainable, affordable nutrition intensifies, the idea of a fish-fortified loaf—hiding a dose of complete protein inside an everyday slice—may prove one of the more quietly revolutionary developments in food science.

Subject of Research: Nutritional and sensory evaluation of wheat bread fortified with silver carp fish powder

Article Title: Fortification of bread with silver carp ( Hypophthalmichthys molitrix ) fish powder: Effects on nutritional composition and sensory attributes

Article References: Maria, S. J., Antu, M. A. R., Ahmed, M. T., Choudhury, M., Mondal, S., Rahman, M. A., & Haq, M. (2026). Fortification of bread with silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix) fish powder: Effects on nutritional composition and sensory attributes. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45460. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45460

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45460

Keywords: silver carp, bread fortification, food science, protein enrichment, amino acids, malnutrition, functional foods, mineral content, sensory evaluation, aquaculture, Heliyon, Bangladesh

Allometric growth is a concept borrowed from biology, where it describes how, for example, the surface area of an animal scales with its body volume. In its classical mathematical form, the law states that the relative growth rate of one measure is proportional to the relative growth rate of another, with a constant coefficient. The solution to this differential equation is a power function, and the exponent of that function is the allometric scaling exponent. When John Q. Stewart and later Naroll and von Bertalanffy imported these ideas into the study of cities and urbanization, scientists assumed the exponents should be explainable by Euclidean dimensions. Urban population was treated as a three-dimensional measure and urban area as a two-dimensional one, predicting a scaling exponent of two-thirds. Where two measures shared the same dimension, the expected exponent was exactly one.

Observations refused to cooperate. Decades of empirical calculations on real cities produced scaling exponents that were neither integers nor simple ratios of integers, and this mismatch created what the literature calls the dimensional dilemma. Scientists faced an unpalatable choice: either abandon the law of allometric growth, which clearly described real patterns in the data, or find a more sophisticated geometry to explain it. The escape route, Chen argues, was opened by the arrival of fractal geometry in the 1970s and 1980s, through the work of Benoit Mandelbrot and, in urban contexts, Michael Batty and Pierre Frankhauser. Once cities were recognized as fractal objects, sprawling, self-similar structures whose detailed shapes repeat across scales, the exotic values of scaling exponents suddenly became interpretable.

The theoretical core of the new study rests on the principle of dimensional consistency, an idea stretching back to ancient Greek mathematics. Measures of different dimensions, such as length, area, and volume, cannot form simple proportional relationships; to construct such relationships, the dimensions must be brought into consistency through exponents. When two measures of a complex system are proportional, the scaling exponent connecting them must equal the ratio of their dimensions. If those dimensions are Euclidean, the exponent should be a recognizable fraction like two-thirds or three-halves. But if the exponent is not such a ratio, then at least one of the underlying measures must be fractal, possessing a dimension greater than its topological dimension and typically non-integer. Chen turns this logic into a diagnostic table: integer or simple-fraction exponents consistent with Euclidean geometry point to ordinary measures, while values such as three-quarters or 0.85 betray the presence of fractal structure.

To make the argument concrete, Chen assembled empirical evidence from Chinese cities, drawing on census data from 2000 and 2010 covering the thirty-one regions of the Chinese mainland. Two allometric relationships were examined: the scaling between the total urban population of each region and the number of cities it contains, and the scaling between total urban population and the population of each region’s central city. In every case, the estimated exponents fell well below one, clustering around values from roughly 0.64 to 0.72 depending on the year, the relationship, and the estimation method. None of these numbers can be produced by any ratio of Euclidean dimensions. Under the dimensional consistency principle, the only coherent conclusion is that the measures involved are fractal, and the exponents are ratios of fractal dimensions.

The analysis is careful about statistics in ways that matter for reproducibility. Chen distinguishes between the three worlds of science, the real world of cities, the mathematical world of deductive reasoning, and the computational world of data and algorithms, and shows that parameter estimates depend on which method is used. The least squares regression of population on city number yields a different exponent from the regression of city number on population, and the product of the two exponents equals the goodness of fit, a relationship confirmed in the data. To handle this asymmetry, the study employs the reduced major axis method, which averages the two directions of regression and yields modified exponents. Municipalities directly under the central government, which contain only a single city and therefore behave unlike multi-city provinces, were identified as outliers using standardized residuals, scatter plots, and K-means clustering, and were excluded from the fitting in a documented and principled way.

Beyond the headline relationships, the study connects allometric scaling to other cornerstones of urban science. Zipf’s law, the celebrated rank-size rule stating that city populations follow a power-law distribution, turns out to be mathematically intertwined with cross-sectional allometry: a pair of correlated Zipf distributions for city population and city area derives the transversal allometric model, and the Pareto exponent of the size distribution can itself be read as a fractal dimension. In this framework, cross-sectional allometric scaling is a secondary law flowing from rank-order scaling, and the allometric exponent between two size measures equals the ratio of their two Pareto-derived fractal dimensions. Spatial allometry, measured through concentric circles drawn around a city center, similarly yields exponents that are ratios of radial fractal dimensions describing how population density and built-up land fall away from the core.

The work does not stop at geometry; it also ventures into why scaling laws exist at all. Chen reviews candidate mechanisms, including self-organized criticality, proportional random growth, and preferential attachment, and then advocates a dual explanation grounded in two mathematically equivalent principles: entropy maximization at the macro level and utility maximization at the micro level. A single entropy-maximizing process generates an exponential distribution, but a pair of coupled entropy-maximizing processes, one governing the growing number of cities and one governing the growth of each city, combines two exponential functions into a power law. The same structure emerges from microeconomic reasoning, where individuals and organizations maximizing their satisfaction produce the same aggregate pattern. Intriguingly, this equivalence suggests that the socio-economic character of a city is partly legible through its physical, fractal properties.

The research even carries policy implications. In the multivariate Cobb-Douglas analysis, the contribution of city number to total urban population grew stronger between 2000 and 2010, while the contribution of central-city population weakened, indicating that many small and medium-sized cities collectively drive urbanization more than a few giant metropolises. This is the long tail effect of power-law distributions: when the fractal dimension of the city-size distribution exceeds one, the numerous small settlements at the tail of the hierarchy can absorb enormous urban populations. For Chen, the practical lesson is that developing small and medium-sized cities first, and then tuning the largest cities, is the mathematically informed path to raising urbanization, a conclusion that elevates a seemingly abstract fractal ratio into a tool for planning the urban future. The study’s remaining open question, the possible connection between allometric growth and the third defining property of fractals, entropy conservation, is flagged honestly as unsolved, leaving an inviting frontier for the next chapter of urban science.

Subject of Research: Fractal dimension as the mathematical basis of allometric scaling exponents in urban systems

Article Title: Fractal dimension accounts for allometric scaling exponents of cities

Article References: Chen, Y. (2026). Fractal dimension accounts for allometric scaling exponents of cities. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45409. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45409

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45409

Keywords: fractal dimension, allometric scaling, urban science, power laws, Zipf's law, Chinese cities, urbanization, dimensional consistency, entropy maximization, city size distribution, Heliyon, complex systems