Advancing Open Science

Background/Objectives: Longitudinal dental examinations provide prognostic outcomes but are costly to collect. We investigated whether representations learned from public cross-sectional examinations could support prediction of new caries experience in baseline-sound permanent first molars when longitudinal labels are limited. Methods: An encoder learned masked tooth-state reconstruction from 5837 US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey examinations. Among 919 baseline-eligible Saudi schoolchildren, 849 had complete eligible-tooth follow-up, with 263 events across 16 schools; frozen representations were evaluated for approximately one-year new caries experience. Nested internal–external evaluation across schools compared 15 prediction pipelines and representation controls, using development-only calibration and matched training-school budgets. Discrimination, probability accuracy, follow-up allocation, incomplete charts and outcome uncertainty were assessed. Results: Frozen transfer achieved an area under the receiver-operating-characteristic curve (AUROC) of 0.6848 versus 0.6643 for random forest, with Brier scores of 0.19461 and 0.19868; paired difference intervals included zero. At nominal 20% school capacity, 164 children were selected (19.32% realised capacity), capturing 89 versus 82 observed future cases: a difference of 2.66 percentage points (95% interval 0.31–5.86), conditional on fitted predictions. Exploratory training with eight of 15 development schools yielded AUROCs of 0.6663 and 0.6280, respectively. Allocation captured only four of 75 events among children aged 5–7. Conclusions: Transferred information may support limited-label prognosis, but clinically meaningful incremental value remains unconfirmed and selection coverage varies by age. Independent longitudinal validation and clinical-impact evaluation are needed before preventive-care deployment.

The use of Earth Observation data for monitoring of aquatic and coastal ecosystems has expanded significantly, yet gaps remain in the spectral and thermal capabilities needed to detect and characterize liquid discharges. This study evaluates the potential of simulated pre-launch CHIME and LSTM observations, integrated with operational Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8/9 data, for water-quality anomaly detection across diverse aquatic environments, demonstrating that the simulated datasets are sufficiently realistic to reproduce key water-quality and thermal indicators and support pre-operational application development prior to mission launch. A multi-stage workflow was applied: initial anomaly detection with multispectral imagery, thermal verification using LSTM-simulated brightness temperatures processed via linear and quadratic split-window algorithms, and spectral characterization of turbidity and spectral signatures with atmospherically corrected CHIME-simulated data. Results showed consistent spatial patterns of turbidity and surface temperature between simulated and operational products, with CHIME resolving finer spectral features of suspended matter and the quadratic LSTM model achieving low RMSE relative to Landsat thermal references. These findings demonstrate the cross-sensor consistency and complementary information provided by simulated CHIME and LSTM products, supporting their use in the pre-launch development of future multisensor workflows for detecting and characterizing optical and thermal water anomalies. Identification of specific contaminants and attribution of anomalies to individual discharge sources were not assessed in this study.

Neuromotor exercise is recognized as a distinct domain of physical fitness, yet operational criteria for classifying the neuromotor demands of individual exercises and systematically structuring their progression remain limited. The aim of this paper is to introduce the Neuromotor Exercise Progression (NEP), a quantitative conceptual framework for the classification and progression of neuromotor exercises in musculoskeletal rehabilitation, fitness, and sport settings. Building on the conceptual principles underlying Gentile’s taxonomy and guided by the American College of Sports Medicine conceptualization of neuromotor exercise, the NEP characterizes each exercise according to four variables: level of balance challenge, level of destabilization, degree of coordination, and level of locomotion. Balance challenge reflects the demands imposed by posture, stance, and base of support, whereas destabilization is intended to reflect proprioceptive demands associated with unstable support surfaces and other perturbations to postural and joint stability. Each variable is operationalized at three levels of increasing neuromotor demand. Exercises are classified according to the number of neuromotor components simultaneously challenged and an overall score derived from the four variables. Progression is primarily achieved by integrating a greater number of neuromotor components and secondarily by increasing the overall score within each level. The NEP is intended to provide a systematic basis for identifying the neuromotor profile of an exercise and for selecting and progressing exercises according to individual needs and functional goals. As a conceptual proposal, the framework requires further validation.

Coordinating water allocation, pump scheduling, and hydraulic operation is essential for the safe and economical management of pumped water supply and transfer systems. Differences in planning horizons, hydraulic representations, and computational requirements complicate the translation of allocation plans into feasible equipment actions. This critical narrative review synthesizes multi-timescale coordination, economic–hydraulic coupling, and computational reduction methods and compares their applicability across system types and operating conditions. The synthesis identifies delivery windows, storage constraints, and operational feedback as essential links between decision layers. It distinguishes electricity cost savings from energy savings and shows why equipment transitions must be assessed alongside scheduled operating states. Hierarchical decomposition, model reduction, and surrogate models can offer computational benefits while requiring explicit feasibility checks and separate accounting of offline preparation and online decision time. Based on this synthesis, the review proposes a three-layer reference architecture linking water allocation, economic scheduling, and hydraulic execution through defined information exchanges, action-specific acceptance rules, and qualified fallback procedures. Future research should strengthen validation across time scales, uncertainty-aware hydraulic checking, and evaluation of computational performance under engineering operating conditions.

Chronic inflammation within the prostate tumor microenvironment drives disease progression, in part because locally released cytokines make malignant cells more motile and better able to invade surrounding tissue. Plant-derived bioactive compounds may offer a potential strategy for attenuating inflammation-associated tumor aggressiveness. This study investigated the effects of the ethyl acetate fraction of Terminalia chebula Retz. (TC-EA) and its major constituent, chebulagic acid, on inflammation-stimulated migration and the invasion of castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) cells. TC-EA was obtained by solvent-partitioning and chemically characterized using the Folin–Ciocalteu method and high-performance liquid chromatography. DU145 and PC3 cells were pretreated with TC-EA or chebulagic acid and subsequently exposed to conditioned medium derived from LPS-exposed THP-1 M1-like macrophages (M1-THP-1-CM), which contained elevated levels of IL-6 and IL-1β. Cell migration and invasion were assessed using wound-healing and Transwell invasion assays, respectively, while gelatin zymography, RT-qPCR, and Western blotting were used to evaluate invasion-associated molecular changes. TC-EA contained 511.12 ± 33.02 mg GAE/g extract of total phenolics and 264.34 ± 13.26 mg/g extract of chebulagic acid. M1-THP-1-CM significantly enhanced the migration and invasion in both cell lines, whereas neutralization of IL-6 or IL-1β attenuated these effects. TC-EA (10–40 μg/mL) and chebulagic acid (5–20 µM) significantly reduced M1-THP-1-CM-enhanced migration and invasion (p < 0.05). These effects were associated with reduced MMP-2 and MMP-9 activities, decreased expression of the invasion-associated proteins uPA, uPAR, and MT1-MMP, increased E-cadherin expression, and decreased N-cadherin and MT1-MMP mRNA expression (p < 0.01), and attenuated phosphorylation of AKT and GSK3β. These findings suggest that TC-EA and chebulagic acid may attenuate inflammation-driven migration and invasion of CRPC cells, potentially involving modulation of cytokine-associated AKT/GSK3β signaling.

Practical fixed-time backstepping control of uncertain electro-hydraulic position servo systems must address derivative-related terms induced by low-order nonsmooth virtual controls while ensuring a settling-time bound independent of the initial conditions. This paper proposes a practical fixed-time backstepping control scheme with an extended lumped disturbance observer for systems driven by three-stage electro-hydraulic servo valves. Based on a third-order strict-feedback model, system uncertainties and these derivative-related terms are incorporated into extended lumped disturbances in the mechanical and hydraulic channels. Fixed-time disturbance observers estimate these terms online, and the backstepping controller compensates for them to achieve trajectory tracking. Lyapunov analysis shows practical fixed-time stability of the closed-loop error system: all error states converge to a small neighborhood of the origin within a settling-time bound independent of the initial conditions, while all closed-loop signals remain bounded. Simulations demonstrate improved sinusoidal tracking accuracy and illustrate the practical fixed-time convergence behavior under different initial conditions. Experiments under sinusoidal and random-wave references demonstrate improved tracking accuracy with smooth servo-valve driving voltages.

Cancer is increasingly understood as a tissue- and system-level disease shaped by dynamic interactions among malignant cells, stromal elements, the vasculature, the immune system, and the nervous system. In this context, tumors are not passive recipients of neural input, but active participants in the recruitment, remodeling, and exploitation of neural circuits that support tumor initiation, progression, metastasis, immune evasion, and resistance to therapy. Emerging work in cancer neuroscience has therefore shifted the field from a neuron-centric perspective toward an integrated model of the tumor microenvironment in which malignant cells help establish pathogenic neural niches. This review adopts a tumor-centric perspective to examine how cancer cells drive neoneurogenesis, engage in perineural invasion, and co-opt neural signaling and neuro-immune crosstalk to promote disease progression. It first distinguishes tumor-induced nerve growth and remodeling from perineural invasion as related but mechanistically distinct processes, then considers how tumor cell plasticity and neural mimicry enable malignant cells to acquire neuronal-like traits and exploit neural pathways. The review further explores how tumor-driven innervation shapes angiogenesis, immune modulation, therapeutic resistance, and minimal residual disease while also assessing emerging strategies designed to therapeutically target the tumor–nerve axis. By integrating these themes, the review highlights innervation not as a secondary feature of cancer, but as an active and potentially actionable dimension of tumor biology.

Biochar can improve composting, yet the ecotoxicological consequences of returning compost’s biochar to composting are poorly understood. Mature but off-specification compost was pyrolysed at 550 °C, and the resulting biochar (CBC) was added at 0, 3, 6 and 9% of dry matter to pilot-scale piles (one ~15 Mg pile per rate) of green waste and sewage sludge (9:1). After 39 days, the composts were analysed for respiration activity (AT₄), nutrients, heavy metals and water-extractable ions and tested with the Phytotoxkit (Triticum aestivum, Sinapis alba, Pisum sativum) and Ostracodtoxkit (Heterocypris incongruens). CBC tended to increase K, Mn and Cu and reduce Ca and Mg; total metals remained below regulatory limits. CBC9 had the lowest AT₄ (<10 mg O₂ g⁻¹), interpreted as inhibited microbial activity, and the strongest biological response (72.5% shoot inhibition in wheat; 83.2% ostracod growth inhibition). In PCA, these responses aligned with K, Mn, pH and oxidised N forms, probably markers of biochar loading. In this exploratory study, 3% CBC showed the most favourable ecotoxicological profile, though not an established optimum for compost quality; composts meeting chemical and stability criteria may still be ecotoxic.