Université de Fianarantsoa

Globally, most farms are smaller than 10 hectares. Land use by these smallholder farmers in agricultural frontiers is crucial to conservation, food security, and exposure to infectious diseases. However, solely survey-based land use studies miss the fine scale movements that collectively form an individual’s land use and thus environmental exposures, particularly in fragmented landscapes. We applied movement ecology-based approaches with GPS and survey data to investigate how sociodemographic variables corresponded with land use among farmers living adjacent to Marojejy National Park in northeastern Madagascar. Our data on 902 individuals spanning 3 years revealed striking differences in land use by gender and socioeconomic status. Men traversed 65% (95% CI [51%, 82%]) more area and spent 30% less time (95% CI [20, 41%]) in the village than women. Socioeconomic status, educational attainment, and having young children covaried with time spent in secondary forests where vanilla is grown, swidden areas where slash-and-burn farming methods are used, and the national park. By revealing the extent to which social and demographic variables predict individual movement patterns, our work identifies targets for addressing emerging diseases and health disparities. The GPS and analytical approaches developed here can be applied elsewhere to provide policy insights and to understand variation across human-ecological systems.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-026-40592-6.

Leptospirosis, a globally distributed, environmentally transmitted zoonosis, causes 2.9 million disability-adjusted life years annually, primarily among rural farmers in tropical regions. Infected animals' urine contaminates soils and water with Leptospira bacteria, where other individuals are then exposed. Understanding the impact of land use on the transmission of this disease is of considerable importance. In Madagascar, infection dynamics are impacted by the combined effects of converting forests to agricultural fields and colonization of these areas by non-native mammal species, which carry molecularly distinct lineages of Leptospira. We show that land use corresponds to the replacement of native species and endemic Leptospira lineages with non-native species and their cosmopolitan L. interrogans and L. kirschneri. Together, this contributes to higher infection prevalence in more disturbed habitats like flooded rice fields, where >50% of mice captured were infected, highlighting the important effects of land use on Leptospira prevalence and presence, which together impact zoonotic risk.

ABSTRACTIntroductionFemale genital schistosomiasis is a condition with a complex diagnosis and severe consequences such as infertility. In the absence of a reliable biomarker, in endemic settings the World Health Organization recommends colposcopy as a diagnostic tool for the detection of female genital schistosomiasis lesions. Nevertheless, it is seldom performed in low‐resource contexts due to a lack of expertise or insufficient infrastructure. This study aims to assess Female Genital Schistosomiasis colposcopy at the primary level of care, evaluating its diagnostic accuracy in reference to gynaecologist diagnosis in a highly endemic context.Materials and MethodsThis is a secondary analysis of a cross‐sectional study conducted in the Boeny region of Madagascar, which collected colposcopy images and Female Genital Schistosomiasis decision at the primary health care level with re‐evaluation by gynaecologists. Statistical analysis using R included descriptive statistics, measures of diagnostic accuracy with 95% confidence intervals and binary Poisson regression with robust standard errors, while reporting followed the STARD statement.ResultsAmong 495 included participants, a high sensitivity [96.4% (95% CI 93.7–98.0)] and relatively low specificity [28.7% (95% CI 21.8–36.5)], with a fair agreement [κ 0.30 (95% CI 0.22–0.39)], was observed for midwife‐led colposcopy. Practice of midwives (3.5 months) was associated with reduced concordance [APR 0.88 (95% CI 0.79–0.98)] and specificity [APR 0.27 (95% CI 0.15–0.49)]. The environment of one health care centre negatively influenced concordance and specificity of midwife‐led colposcopy.ConclusionMidwives can detect female genital schistosomiasis with high sensitivity but limited specificity when compared to expert gynaecologists, revealing variation in performance between environments as well as the influence of practice and workload. This study suggests that implementing midwife‐led colposcopy at primary care level for female genital schistosomiasis screening is feasible but requires appropriate quality assurance measures.

Introduction: In Madagascar, coverage of the optimal dose (three doses or more) of Intermittent Preventive Treatment with Sulfadoxine-Pyrimethamine during pregnancy (IPTp-SP) remains low, reaching only 31% in 2021. This study aimed to investigate the factors influencing this low coverage in a particularly affected community. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study using a mixed-methods approach, conducted among mothers with a child under 12 months and healthcare personnel in Farafangana from November 19, 2024, to January 10, 2025. A descriptive analysis, a bivariate and multivariate logistic regression, were conducted. The odds ratio with a 95% confidence interval was used as the measure of association. Qualitative data analysis was conducted manually based on predefined themes and sub-themes. Results: The coverage of the optimal dose of IPTp-SP was 28.9%. Factors significantly associated with the non-receipt of the optimal dose included women under 25 years of age (adjusted odds ratios (AOR) [95% confidence intervals (CI)] = 0.47 [0.26 – 0.83]), being multigravida (AOR [95% CI] = 1.66 [1.08 – 3.14]), multiparity (AOR [95% CI] = 1.62 [1.13 – 3.18]), poor knowledge of the recommended dose (AOR [95% CI] = 6.82 [3.21 – 14.49]), late initiation of intake (AOR [95% CI] = 2.28 [1.41 – 3.67]), and SP-related side effects (AOR [95% CI] = 1.58 [1.02 – 2.46]). The qualitative approach corroborated these findings and identified the influence of women’s social surroundings. Conclusion: Factors related to women, sociocultural aspects, and the health system influence the low coverage of the optimal IPTp-SP dose in Farafangana. An implementation approach addressing all these factors would be essential to improve coverage.

Abstract Background: Digital pathology generates vast amounts of whole-slide images(WSIs), offering unprecedented opportunities for AI-driven precision medicine.However, the development of robust and generalizable models faces systemic challenges, primarily the scarcity and high cost of high-quality manual annotationsfrom expert clinicians. Efficient selection of representative subsets of datacoresets can reduce annotation effort and computational cost while maintainingmodel performance. This study introduces AIMS (An Informative MeaningfulSubset), a coreset selection strategy and validates it on a use case of prostatecancer (PCa) grading. Methods: This study uses a dataset of 187 H&E-stained whole-slide images(WSIs) from prostatectomy sections, tiled at 20× magnification with 512×512pixel patches. AIMS employs a convolutional autoencoder to learn a compactlatent representation of these tiles, followed by a geometry- and activation-drivensubsampling strategy. The feature space of mean activation vectors is partitioned, and representative coresets (0.5%, 1%, and 2.5% of the full dataset) areselected via cosine similarity. Performance is evaluated using ConvNeXt (trainedfrom scratch) and ResNet18 (with pre-trained UNI embeddings), comparingAIMS-selected subsets to random sampling across datasets with varying characteristics. Model performance is assessed using F1-macro, F1-micro, F1-weighted scores, AUC, and Cohen’s kappa, with additional evaluation of cross-scannergeneralization. Results: Coreset selection via AIMS consistently outperformed random sampling. ConvNeXt trained on AIMS-selected subsets achieved competitive performances using only a fraction of the original data (F1-macro = [0.724-0.782]and AUC = [0.921-0.945]). Cross-scanner evaluation demonstrated robustnessto hardware variability. Similarly, performance were obtained using AIMSselected tiles in the UNI feature space (F1-macro = [0.735-0.742] and AUC =[0.941-0.942]). Conclusion: AIMS-based targeted coreset selection can achieve promising classification performance, representing a viable strategy for substantially reducingannotation costs. This data-efficient approach offers a practical and scalablestrategy for deploying AI in digital pathology, particularly in data-constrainedenvironments, and represents a step toward real-world clinical applicability ofAI-driven PCa diagnosis and grading.

This study aims to investigate the impact of gender and school origin on mathematics learning outcomes. Specifically, the study will analyze whether there are significant differences in mathematical ability between male and female students, and evaluate whether learning outcomes differ between students from public and private schools. The research was conducted at three different schools: MI Muslimin Bojongranca, MI Muslimin Cipongkor 1, and SDN Pasir Banteng in West Bandung Regency, specifically in grade V. A quantitative approach with an Ex Post Facto method was applied, and the data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results indicate that school origin significantly affects students’ mathematics learning outcomes, with students from MI Muslimin Cipongkor 1 achieving higher average scores compared to those from MI Muslimin Bojongranca. Meanwhile, no significant differences were found between male and female students. The analysis was continued using non-parametric tests. This study recommends that schools enhance the quality of teaching and learning facilities to improve students’ outcomes, and future research may explore other factors influencing mathematics achievement.

This study aims to investigate the impact of gender and school origin on mathematics learning outcomes. Specifically, the study will analyze whether there are significant differences in mathematical ability between male and female students, and evaluate whether learning outcomes differ between students from public and private schools. The research was conducted at three different schools: MI Muslimin Bojongranca, MI Muslimin Cipongkor 1, and SDN Pasir Banteng in West Bandung Regency, specifically in grade V. A quantitative approach with an Ex Post Facto method was applied, and the data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results indicate that school origin significantly affects students’ mathematics learning outcomes, with students from MI Muslimin Cipongkor 1 achieving higher average scores compared to those from MI Muslimin Bojongranca. Meanwhile, no significant differences were found between male and female students. The analysis was continued using non-parametric tests. This study recommends that schools enhance the quality of teaching and learning facilities to improve students’ outcomes, and future research may explore other factors influencing mathematics achievement.

Abstract Study on interspecific interaction is not common in the wild edible silkworm Borocera cajani. This study explored the diversity and seasonal variation of parasitoid wasps associated with B. cajani. Weekly sampling was conducted during the rainy season (November to May 2023) using yellow pan traps and Malaise traps on Tapia woodland and its surrounding habitat, which included vegetable farming systems and agroforestry. The results revealed a high diversity of wasp parasitoids (n = 72). Only three of the fifteen species known to be parasitic were studied: Apanteles decaryi Granger (larval stage), Enicospilus evanescens Gauld & Mitchell (cocoon stage), and Scelio sp1 (egg stage). The observed wasp parasitoid density doesn’t affect the density of the edible B. cajani. The rarity of the host explained also the weak diversity. Nevertheless, the diversity and seasonal variation in these wasp species highlighted the importance of the habitat as a refugee, which was highest in coffee plantation (n = 58), followed by the vegetable farming systems (n = 43), and lowest in tapia woodlands (n = 36). Compared to vegetable farming and coffee plantations, the hierarchical classification of species highlighted the distinctive diversity inherent in woodland ecosystems. However, the conservation and sustainability of the tapia woodland as a refuge and provider of insect ecosystem services may face challenges in the future due to the potential impact of chemical pesticides used on barley crops.