Search Results (1,853)

This study proposes a real-time chiller capacity control strategy based on marginal Coefficient of Performance (COP) analysis to improve the energy efficiency of air-conditioning systems. The research focuses on the air-conditioning system (ACS) of an office building. Operational data, including chiller capacity and the corresponding COP, were collected to derive the chiller’s operating characteristic curve. The Optimal Capacity Control (OCC) strategy aims to maximize the total COP of all chillers, and the initial capacity allocation is determined using the Lagrange multiplier method. To further refine performance, a fine-tuning mechanism is introduced, calculating the ratio of COP variation to capacity variation (RC ratio) for each chiller to identify which unit should be loaded or unloaded. Based on the fine-tuning mechanism, a comprehensive OCC model is established to ensure that the chiller’s cooling output precisely matches the load demand, thereby maximizing system efficiency and reducing energy consumption. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed OCC strategy, a numerical analysis was implemented using real operational data from the existing ACS. Comparative simulations between the OCC and a Traditional Capacity Control (TCC) strategy were conducted. On a representative summer day, total power consumption decreased from 1534.0 kWh (TCC) to 1527.2 kWh (OCC), while total system COP increased from 113.9 to 114.8. Seasonal analysis further confirms consistent energy savings under varying load conditions. The results indicate that the OCC strategy significantly enhances system performance and reduces energy consumption under varying load conditions. Overall, the proposed method achieves a higher system COP, leading to notable electricity savings and improved operational efficiency of the air-conditioning system. Full article

Hemophilia is an X-linked inherited bleeding disorder characterized by joint hemorrhages and progressive arthropathy. While mutation type is known to influence disease severity, its impact on postural balance strategies has remained unclear. This cross-sectional study investigated the relationship between gene mutation type and postural control in hemophilia A patient using center of pressure (CoP) analysis and radiographic joint assessment with the Pettersson score. Thirty-five participants were divided into an INV group (intron 22 or intron 1 inversion of the F8 gene) and a NonINV group (other mutations). While the Pettersson scores and traditional time-domain CoP parameters (sway area, velocity) were comparable between groups, frequency domain analysis revealed a significant difference. INV group exhibited significantly higher energy content above 2 Hz in the anteroposterior direction compared to NonINV group. This genotype-specific spectral signature emerged despite comparable radiographic arthropathy and conventional CoP metrics, suggesting that frequency-domain CoP analysis can uncover subclinical postural adaptations in hemophilia A. These findings highlight the need for targeted proprioceptive training in this specific subpopulation to prevent subclinical instability and potential falls. Full article

Phase change materials (PCMs) have emerged as a key enabler of high-performance, low-carbon buildings through latent heat-based thermal energy storage. This paper presents a systematic and critical synthesis of advances in PCM technologies for building applications published between 2022 and 2025, analyzing over 300 peer-reviewed studies to evaluate thermal performance, economic viability, environmental impact, and climate adaptability across three integration approaches: passive, active, and hybrid systems. The studies analyzed show that passive envelope integration employing macroencapsulated or form-stable PCMs in walls, roofs, and glazing is reported to deliver 15–45% energy savings with payback periods of 8–15 years, primarily through enhanced thermal inertia and indoor temperature stabilization. Active systems, which couple PCMs with HVAC, heat pumps, or air handling units, are found to achieve 20–40% energy reductions and shorter payback periods (3–8 years) by enabling load shifting, peak shaving, and improved coefficient of performance (COP). Hybrid configurations integrating passive and active strategies with AI-driven control demonstrate, in the literature, the highest potential, with reported energy savings of up to 50%, though they entail greater complexity and capital cost. The review further highlights material-level innovations, including ternary composite PCMs, bio-based alternatives, and nano-enhanced formulations that address intrinsic limitations such as low thermal conductivity (0.1–0.3 W/m·K for organics) and cycling instability. Despite significant progress, critical gaps persist in standardized testing protocols, long-term field validation, comprehensive lifecycle assessments, and real-world scalability, particularly in tropical and cold climates. By bridging material science, building physics, and energy system engineering, this work provides a forward-looking roadmap to accelerate the deployment of PCM-based solutions in the global decarbonization of the built environment. Full article

Background: The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between body weight (weight category groups) and the ability to maintain balance in conditions of restricted field of vision and support area in female wrestlers. Methods: The study involved female wrestlers (n = 34), who were divided into three weight categories. The Romberg test was performer using a freeSTEP STANDARD stabilometric platform. The analysed stabilometric parameters measuring the range of centre-of-pressure (CoP) deviation included total path length (PL) of foot pressure on the ground. Results: The postural stability of female wrestlers was determined by their position, the quality of visual information, the limitation of the support base, and their weight category. As visual information and the support base were limited (when standing on one leg), the deviation of the centre of gravity increased (right leg: f² = 0.293, p < 0.005). Lightweight competitors showed the biggest body deviations in the ‘standing with both feet and eyes open’ position compared to the middleweight and heavyweight categories (eyes open EO f² = 0.233, p < 0.05; eyes closed EC f² = 0.217, p < 0.05). The differences between the tests with eyes open and closed were statistically significant only in the lightweight category. Conclusions: Balance training on the right leg with eyes open can be a sensitive diagnostic test, highlighting differences in stability levels between weight groups. It indicates the need to develop stability while eliminating visual compensation in order to compensate for these differences in competitive sports. Full article

The goal of this research is to minimize the electrical energy consumption and emissions of the refrigeration cycle as a step towards sustainable refrigeration. The Vapor Compression Cycle (VCC) relies mainly on electrical energy; however, the developed Heated Vapor Compression Cycle (HVCC) relies on electrical energy as well as solar energy, which lowers our dependence on electrical energy and improves environmental sustainability. The objective of this research is to improve the coefficient of performance (COP) of the HVCC in comparison to the VCC by adding an intermediate flash tank to the capillary tube. The intermediate flash tank converts the wet refrigerant into saturated liquid, which decreases the quality of the refrigerant at the entrance of the evaporator and consequently improves the cooling potential, i.e., the cooling power. The proposed concept was examined for four different refrigerants, i.e., R502, R407c, R22 and R410a, and at four different intermediate pressures. Also, the influence of the heating temperature on the HVCC as a function of intermediate pressure was examined. It was found that, for all the examined refrigerants, decreasing the intermediate flash tank pressure improves the COP of the cycle. The HVCC operating with R410a has the highest COP, i.e., 6.2, at an intermediate flash tank pressure of 165 psi and a heating temperature of 100 °C, while R407c has the highest COP of 4.8 when compared with R502 and R22 when operating under the same pressures. Adding a flash tank to the HVCC operating with refrigerant R410a can improve the COP of the cycle by more than 40% and by more than 25% in the case of refrigerant R407c. Such improvement in the performance of the cycle reduces electrical energy consumption and improves the environmental sustainability of the cycle. Full article

Enhancing heat transfer in latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) can help further alleviate the negative effects brought about by excessive consumption of fossil energy. This study proposes to couple and enhance LHTES through gradient pore foam and the addition of nanoparticles. Three types of storage tanks with positive gradient porosity, uniform porosity, and negative gradient porosity were designed, and three concentrations of nanoparticle addition ratios were equipped. The research on phase change heat storage was carried out through verified numerical models. The analysis indicates that complete melting time of a tank designed with a positive gradient is decreased by 984 s and reduced by 11.23% compared with a tank without a gradient design. Tanks designed with negative gradient porosity delayed the complete melting time by 2451.8 s, which was extended by 28.00%. Adding an appropriate number of nanoparticles can help enhance heat exchange rate and improve efficiency, while excessive addition of nanoparticles will inhibit heat storage rate, causing a counterproductive effect on heat storage. When the nanoparticle filling concentration was 10%, the storage rate of the tank with positive gradient was the highest, reaching 0.04445 kW, which was 0.00605 higher than the tank without nanoparticle addition, representing a 15.76% increase. Coupling the heat storage tank to the ideal heat pump system for heating can increase its COP from 1.82 to 1.97, which represents an improvement of 8.24%. Full article

Amid a deepening global socio-ecological crisis, Indigenous eco-spiritual practices are gaining renewed relevance for environmental governance. This article examines the water-caring practices of the Papallaqta, an Indigenous community in the Colombian Macizo—one of South America’s most vital hydrological systems. Drawing on relational methodologies, as well as extensive fieldwork conducted between 2024 and 2025, the study shows how Papallaqta spiritual relationships with water constitute a sophisticated form of governance grounded in reciprocity, reverence, and more-than-human relationality. The article situates these practices within global debates on environmental governance, where recent COP16 (Cali) and COP30 (Belém) summits have revealed the limits of technocratic, market-driven approaches to biodiversity loss, energy transition, and climate justice. Against these constraints, Papallaqta eco-spiritual governance offers an alternative paradigm based on spiritual animacy, legal cosmologies, and embodied ecological stewardship. Empirically, the article documents four interrelated dimensions of Papallaqta water-care: offerings to the water, ecological stewardship, territorial governance, and memory and cultural revitalization. Conceptually, it proposes eco-spiritual governance as an analytic for understanding how spiritual world-making informs environmental ethics, justice, and peacebuilding. The study concludes that Papallaqta practices illuminate viable pathways toward relational and regenerative environmental governance urgently needed in the current planetary crisis. Full article

Rumor source detection aims to identify the initial origin of misinformation diffusion in social networks. Accurate source localization is essential for effective rumor intervention and early mitigation in large-scale social media platforms. Existing rumor source detection methods often struggle to model complex propagation structures. However, applying mathematical models uniformly to all samples introduces unnecessary computational overhead and limits scalability. By leveraging GNN-based candidate ranking, our approach effectively narrows the source search space and provides a reliable structural foundation for subsequent reasoning. Prior studies typically perform end-to-end inference without considering prediction confidence, leading to inefficient processing of low-uncertainty samples. To address this issue, we introduce an entropy-based uncertainty filtering mechanism that selectively identifies high-uncertainty cases requiring further reasoning, significantly reducing redundant computation. Meanwhile, existing methods lack semantic interpretability when handling ambiguous propagation patterns, motivating the incorporation of large language model (LLM) reasoning. We employ LLM-based reasoning only on filtered samples to enhance semantic understanding while controlling inference cost. Based on these designs, we propose TSR-RSD, a tri-stage selective reasoning framework that integrates GNN-based structural modeling, uncertainty-driven sample selection, and LLM-based semantic reasoning. Experimental results on GossipCop, PolitiFact, and PHEME demonstrate that TSR-RSD consistently outperforms GNN-based baselines in terms of Hit@1, Hit@3, Hit@5, and Mean Reciprocal Rank (MRR), reflecting improved accuracy and stability in rumor source ranking. Furthermore, the entropy-based uncertainty filtering mechanism significantly reduces the LLM invocation ratio by approximately 40–60%, while maintaining comparable or improved ranking performance. As a result, TSR-RSD achieves an overall inference time reduction of 35–50%, effectively balancing localization accuracy, computational efficiency, and interpretability. Full article

SPAs (suppressors of phyA-105) are key modulators of photomorphogenesis that regulate diverse aspects of plant growth. While the role of SPA proteins in Arabidopsis photomorphogenesis is well-characterized, the functions of their maize (Zea mays L.) homologs (ZmSPAs) remain largely unexplored. Here, we show that ZmSPAs have the typical conserved domains of the SPA family and respond to different light qualities and photoperiodic treatments. Further analysis of the subcellular localization of ZmSPAs showed that ZmSPA1 and ZmSPA2 were localized to the nucleus, while ZmSPA3 and ZmSPA4 were localized to both the nucleus and the plasma membrane. The results of tissue-specific expression showed that ZmSPA1 and ZmSPA2 had the highest relative expression level in silks, while ZmSPA3 and ZmSPA4 were mainly expressed in leaves. Interestingly, overexpression of ZmSPAs in Arabidopsis promoted hypocotyl elongation in seedlings, inhibited cotyledon expansion in seedlings, and increased plant height in mature plants. The Y2H and LCI results indicate that ZmSPAs have physical interactions with ZmCOP1a, ZmCOP1b, and AtCOP1. These findings reveal the roles of ZmSPAs in regulating photomorphogenesis in Arabidopsis seedlings and plant height development in mature plants, laying a foundation for future investigations into their endogenous functions in maize. Full article

Elastocaloric cooling is an emerging solid-state refrigeration technology that leverages the latent heat exchange of shape memory alloys under mechanical stress. This study investigates the energy performance of a solid-to-solid elastocaloric cooling heat pump to enhance heat transfer efficiency and overall system performance. A Matlab-based numerical model, developed using the finite volume method, was employed to simulate the system. The energy performances of the elastocaloric heat pump are analyzed by varying the frequency of the cycle, the elastocaloric refrigerants, and the types of thermal diodes, from ideal up to realistic Peltier switches. The results demonstrate that the strategic use of thermal diodes significantly improves heat flow directionality, reducing thermal losses and enhancing the efficiency of the elastocaloric cooling process with a system that employs a realistic Peltier thermal diode, guaranteeing specific cooling powers up to 6500 W kg⁻¹. The maximum COPs of the system with ideal thermal diodes range from 60 to 10. These findings contribute to the development of more efficient solid-state cooling technologies, offering a viable alternative to conventional systems, especially for electronic circuit cooling applications. Full article

Heparin (Hep) and its clinical antidote protamine (PRO) play essential yet antagonistic roles in anticoagulant therapy, necessitating reliable analytical tools to monitor their levels and interactions. Herein, we report that coptisine chloride (COP), a natural isoquinoline alkaloid, acts as an aggregation-induced emission (AIE) sensor enabling dual-responsive fluorescence modulation toward Hep and PRO. Owing to its rigid polycyclic and intrinsically twisted molecular framework, COP displays typical AIE behavior. In a DMSO/PBS mixture (PBS fraction = 99%, v/v), COP forms strongly emissive aggregates with Hep through electrostatically driven complexation, allowing sensitive Hep detection with a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.70 μg/mL. Subsequent competitive binding of PRO to Hep disrupts the COP–Hep aggregates, giving rise to fluorescence quenching and reversible PRO sensing (LOD: 0.49 μg/mL). Theoretical calculations together with multiple characterization techniques reveal an aggregation–disaggregation mechanism governing the dual fluorescence modulation. Moreover, COP achieves accurate Hep quantification in spiked diluted human serum, affording satisfactory linearity and recoveries (LOD = 0.71 μg/mL; recoveries 98.3–101.6%). These results demonstrate that COP, a structurally simple natural AIE luminogen, serves as a sustainable, biocompatible, and accessible tool for reversible Hep and PRO analysis in complex media. Full article

One of the main takeaways of the recently concluded Conference of the Parties (COP) 30 is the need for all humanity to unite against climate change. Effective climate-related risk and carbon footprint disclosure could serve as a systematic approach to reduce the menace of climate change. Several frameworks for carbon disclosure have been developed and implemented. Nevertheless, there is lack of consistency and clarity in the implementation of the frameworks and how they are integrated into climate reporting. This has created a gap in accountability, often resulting in the misalignment of climate goals, thereby necessitating the need to delve into strategic imperatives of carbon disclosure policies as a mechanism for carbon reduction. In view of this, the main objective of this study is to elucidate how carbon disclosure policies have been strategically positioned as a mechanism for climate-aligned decision making. The study explores and synthesizes existing literature and data on the strategic role of carbon disclosure policies in the carbon emission management of selected countries using the PRISMA framework and secondary data policy synthesis. The analysis reveals that there was a noticeable carbon emissions reduction in countries like Estonia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. This indicates a strong correlation between carbon emissions reduction and high carbon tax implementation. However, there was a lack of perfectly linear correlation between disclosure scores and the carbon emission reduction in some countries, an indication that carbon disclosure is not the sole determinant of carbon emissions management, even though it plays an important role as a catalyst for transparency awareness. The robustness of carbon disclosure policies can be said to be linked to a broader national climate policy, stressing its importance as a climate action framework. Full article

Waste oyster shell powder (OP) and calcined oyster shell powder (COP) were used as bio-fillers in asphalt mastics. Limestone powder (LP) served as the control. This study employed rheological theory to quantify filler–asphalt interactions. Dynamic shear rheometry (DSR), Black diagrams, and master curves were analyzed to determine critical volume fraction (φ_crit), interaction parameter (C), and complex viscosity increment (∆η*). Results indicate that OP mastics exhibit the lowest φ_crit (0.510) and highest C value (1.133), demonstrating the strongest interfacial interaction. COP shows intermediate interaction strength (φ_crit = 0.542), yet both OP and COP outperform LP (φ_crit = 0.617) in high-temperature deformation resistance within the 0.23–0.53 filler volume fraction range, evidenced by superior complex shear modulus (G*) master curves and pronounced ∆η* increases. Grey relational analysis identifies specific surface area and CaCO₃ content as governing factors. Optical microscopy and FTIR confirm that filler–asphalt interactions are dominated by physical adsorption without chemical bond formation. These findings elucidate the performance advantages of both raw and calcined oyster shell powders and provide a theoretical basis for their application as sustainable high-performance bio-fillers in asphalt pavements. Full article

This study investigates the effect of R141b-Al₂O₃ nanorefrigerant with mass fractions of 0.1%, 0.3%, 0.5% and 0.9% (w/w%) on the refrigeration time, energy consumption and performance coefficient of a vapor compression refrigeration system (VCRS). The effects of span80 and Tween80 surfactants on the stability of the nanorefrigerant were also investigated, and the optimum sonication time required to prepare stable nanofluids was determined. The results showed that Span-80 is more effective than Tween 80 at producing a stable nanorefrigerant. Then, the effect of span80 surfactant on the efficiency of VCRS was investigated. The results showed that upon using the nanorefrigerant, COP increased by up to 214% compared to the pure refrigerant. Furthermore, using the nanorefrigerant with a surfactant improved the performance coefficient by 52% compared to the nanorefrigerant without a surfactant. Full article

To address the small ATC-63 record set for collapse-oriented motion selection and the limited interpretability of data-driven approaches, this study proposes a framework for identifying structural-collapse-critical ground motions. Using 5074 records from the PEER NGA-West2 database, we applied STA/LTA event detection and extracted multi-source features. A Gaussian mixture model (GMM) was then used to perform unsupervised clustering and identify four physically interpretable groups. LightGBM, XGBoost, and Random Forest were employed to test the separability of the cluster labels, with all three models achieving F1 scores above 0.89 and LightGBM reaching an accuracy of about 93%. SHAP-based feature-importance analysis was used at the model level to clarify feature contributions and improve interpretability. Cluster 2 exhibits markedly higher relative seismic energy, stronger time-domain variability, and more dominant frequencies, forming a typical strong-motion hazard signature. For external engineering verification, 22 ATC-63 far-field records were mapped onto the full dataset to examine cluster-level enrichment and coverage. Cluster 2 shows significant enrichment in engineering markers and high coverage and is therefore identified as the collapse-sensitive phenotype cluster (COP). Overall, the framework provides a technical basis for ground-motion selection in collapse assessment, fragility analysis, and design evaluation. Full article