Search Results (730)

Studying protein structure dynamics is key to understanding protein function modulation. Alternative protein conformations are well discriminated from each other by nanoESI mass spectrometry and ion mobility measurements. Experimentally determined collisional cross-sections were compared to calculated collisional cross-sections of fifteen peptides, single-domain proteins, and protein complexes. The multi-domain proteins investigated here, four immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies and protein G, are present as compacted/folded “native” conformations in neutral buffered solutions, and they are identified by molecular ions with narrow charge-state distributions, relatively few charges, and small collisional cross-sections. Simultaneously present extended/folded but nevertheless “native” conformations produced additional ions with higher charge states, different charge-state distributions, and larger collisional cross-sections. Computed collisional cross-sections from compacted “o-shape” and extended “l-shape” protein G three-dimensional (3D) structures match experimental data, indicating equilibrium, and suggest a dynamic “o2l” flip process. Likewise, “m-shape” (compacted) and “Y-shape” (extended) IgGs are regarded as two supposedly reversibly adopted antibody conformations which may interchange by an “m2Y” flip. Adopting an m-shape would prevent an antibody-based initiation of humoral and cellular immune system responses, such as opsonophagocytosis, prior to antigen contact, which stands in line with the rearrangement hypothesis. Full article

Intermediate band solar cells require in-gap electronic states that remain sufficiently extended to sustain collective electronic coupling and facilitate carrier motion. We investigate how structural disorder affects an intermediate band formed by coupled colloidal quantum dots embedded in a perovskite-like matrix. The system is represented by a single-orbital tight-binding Hamiltonian on a dilated face-centered-cubic lattice containing 4000 quantum dots, with system sizes between 1372 and 5324 in the finite-size analysis. Radius dispersion modifies on-site energies and hopping amplitudes, whereas positional disorder acts mainly through variations in interdot separation. Eigenstate extension is quantified using the normalized participation ratio. To distinguish spectral broadening from the loss of useful extended states, we also evaluate the mean participation of a contiguous threshold-defined spectral core, its relative energy width, and their product as a combined robustness descriptor. For the adopted baseline parameter set, degradation is energy selective: states near the spectral edges lose participation before states near the band center. At equal nominal amplitudes, radius disorder produces a stronger response than positional disorder, although the two amplitudes do not represent equal realized variances. A positional-disorder amplitude of 0.05 retains approximately 86% of the ordered-reference value of the combined descriptor, whereas a radius-disorder amplitude of 0.05 reduces it to about 22%; when both amplitudes are 0.05, about 14% remains. The model displays a comparatively robust regime near ${\sigma }_R=0.02$, a model-dependent crossover around ${\sigma }_R=0.03$–$0.04$, and strong degradation at larger values. Finite-size results are consistent with near-extensive scaling of the effective core participation number over the simulated sizes, but do not establish a thermodynamic mobility edge. These findings identify quantum-dot size uniformity as the more restrictive model control variable for preserving an extended intermediate-band core. Full article

Electronic waste (e-waste) is among the fastest-growing global waste streams, with 62 million tonnes generated in 2022 and only 22.3% formally recycled, while generation is projected to reach 82 million tonnes by 2030. Fragmented record-keeping, weak chain-of-custody controls, and limited transparency enable illegal dumping, fraudulent recycling claims, and loss of recoverable materials. This paper presents a narrative literature review of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies applied to electronics and e-waste management. Following a structured search and relevance screening of major scientific databases, publisher platforms and grey literature (last search was run on 15 July 2026), 110 sources published between 2017 and 2026 were thematically synthesized across four domains: technological developments, sustainability and circular-economy implications, traceability and compliance mechanisms, and e-waste management applications. Blockchain delivers value primarily through an auditable chain-of-custody built on three pillars: standardized item and batch identities, standardized lifecycle event schemas, and licensed-actor attestations supported by off-chain evidence anchored on-chain. Recurring design patterns include permissioned consortium networks, hybrid storage, and role-based access control. Persistent barriers include data-input integrity, scalability, governance, and cost. Blockchain immutability protects stored records but cannot correct falsified inputs, making trusted data capture and governance the decisive factors for reliability. Adoption should be evaluated against measurable indicators, such as traceability completeness, audit-time reduction, fraud rates, and verified material recovery, rather than assumed benefits. Full article

To address the increasing volume of end-of-life power batteries, governments leverage Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations to encourage battery suppliers to increase recycling. We develop a Stackelberg game model for a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) that includes a government, a battery supplier, an NEV manufacturer, and a third-party recycler. The model endogenizes tax–subsidy decisions while incorporating cascade utilization, competitive intensity, and environmental damage from informal channels. We compare three recycling modes: manufacturer–supplier competition (MSC), manufacturer–third-party competition (MTC), and manufacturer–third-party alliance (MTA). Our analysis addresses three main issues. First, the structure of recycling modes affects the equilibrium decisions of CLSC members: pricing under MSC is governed by a threshold effect of cascade utilization, whereas pricing under MTC depends on relative cost differences. Second, higher cascade utilization strengthens the supplier’s pricing power under MSC, whereas intensified competition reduces the profits of the supplier and government under MSC and MTC; by contrast, the profits of the supplier and government under MTA remain stable. Third, environmental damage encourages the government to raise the subsidy level provided to suppliers for battery recycling. These findings offer practical guidance for designing adaptive EPR policies that balance economic and environmental objectives. Full article

This study evaluates adaptive spatial matrix filtering (AMF) combined with MUSIC for underwater acoustic direction-of-arrival estimation under strong out-of-sector interference and extends the method to coherent sources by incorporating forward spatial smoothing (FSS) into the AMF design. Simulations compared AMF-MUSIC with conventional MUSIC and continuous matrix filter (CMF)-MUSIC. For a 20-sensor array with targets at −2° and 1°, an interferer at 50°, an SNR of −5 dB, and an INR of 20 dB, both AMF-MUSIC and CMF-MUSIC resolved the targets under a common −25 dB stopband bound, but AMF-MUSIC produced a smoother out-of-sector background. Tightening the CMF bound to −40 dB reduced background peaks but degraded target resolution. In coherent-source simulations using a 25-sensor array, AMF-FSS-MUSIC resolved the targets for all tested subarray lengths when the angular separation was at least 4.5°, achieving resolution probabilities of at least 95%. A 900–1100 Hz broadband simulation maintained an approximately −15 dB stopband response and a passband-response error below −12 dB. For the SWellEx-96 narrowband data, AMF-MUSIC reduced the DOA-estimation RMSE from 11.16° to 5.18° and increased the mean spatial-spectrum SIR from −0.41 dB to 13.18 dB, while the broadband results qualitatively demonstrated interference suppression. These results indicate a favorable configuration-dependent suppression–fidelity tradeoff, while robustness to other coherent-source conditions and broader measured-data validation require further investigation. Full article

Availability-oriented monitoring may require low-latency anomaly inference, but deploying a lightweight model as a separate service adds process, serialization, and network-path overhead. This article evaluates the inference-path architecture used by a prototype availability-response loop; it does not evaluate the effectiveness of a new DoS/EDoS detector or claim production attack mitigation. The same IsolationForest model and telemetry vectors were executed through an external Python/FastAPI sidecar and through ONNX Runtime embedded in a Spring Boot JVM. The prototype also included a LSTM Autoencoder and a bounded rule layer producing SCALE_UP, RETRY, FALLBACK, or NONE. The main Kubernetes benchmark used Docker Desktop 4.73.1 (Docker Engine 29.4.3) with Kubernetes v1.34.3 on a single-node cluster. Embedded ONNX reduced request-response latency from 26.090 ms to 4.839 ms on average, from 62.065 ms to 5.367 ms at P95, and from 76.487 ms to 6.244 ms at P99; calculated sequential throughput increased from 38.3 to 206.7 requests/s. Additional checks covered concurrent load, gRPC transport, cold start, memory footprint, and limited Kubernetes actions. In an extended comparison using 15 runs of 950 s for each active configuration, CPU-based HPA, rules-only, and AI+rules produced overlapping aggregate SLA-violation rates; no aggregate benefit of the ML gate over rules alone was observed under the tested degradation proxies. The evidence supports a narrow architectural conclusion: in-process ONNX is a lower-latency and lower-footprint execution path for the tested lightweight model. Detection quality, superiority over rule-only or established autoscaling mechanisms, and effectiveness against real adversarial traffic remain open validation tasks. Full article

Polyphenol oxidase (PPO) is a key enzyme responsible for enzymatic browning in fresh-cut fruits and vegetables, severely compromising their quality and shelf life. This study aimed to investigate the combined inhibitory mechanism of oxyresveratrol (OXY) and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) on PPO through multi-spectroscopic analyses, molecular docking, TEM, and XRD, with the goal of developing a natural and effective anti-browning strategy for fresh-cut fruits. The results showed that the optimal combined effect was achieved at an OXY:EGCG ratio of 1:2, where the inhibition rate was significantly enhanced by 43.72% and 14.36% compared to using OXY or EGCG single treatment, respectively. The combined treatment exhibited enhanced chelation capacity of copper ion and DPPH radical scavenging activity, and enhanced hydrogen-bonding interactions while lowering binding energy, exhibiting characteristics of mixed inhibition kinetics. Structural characterization showed that the combined treatment drastically reduced the enzyme’s fluorescence intensity to 39.81% of that of the native enzyme, induced rearrangements in α-helix and random coil structures, triggered obvious protein aggregation, and weakened the intensity of crystal diffraction peaks. Importantly, the combined treatment effectively delayed browning in fresh-cut pear slices, demonstrating its practical application potential. These findings provide a promising natural combined approach for controlling enzymatic browning and extending the shelf life of fresh-cut produce. Full article

Pharmaceutical waste is a challenge for the environment and public health in the European Union (EU). Although EU legislation requires Member States to establish collection systems for unwanted household pharmaceutical products, there is no common legal framework governing the application of extended producer responsibility (EPR) in this area, which has led to differences in the financing, organization, and effectiveness of national waste collection systems. Against this background, the aim of this work was to critically examine the role of EPR in the management of household pharmaceutical waste in the EU by analyzing its legal foundations, comparing selected national take-back systems, identifying the barriers to its implementation and indicating the key elements of a future EU regulatory framework. The analysis indicates that key elements of the future EPR framework for pharmaceutical products should include financing for producers through producer responsibility organizations (PROs), free and accessible collection of medicinal products from patients through community pharmacies, full cost compensation for collection point operators, common reporting requirements, environmentally differentiated producer contributions, consumer education, and independent public oversight. The future EU framework could build on good practices developed in Member States with established EPR systems and on the regulatory solutions adopted in EU environmental legislation. Full article

Aging is the strongest risk factor for chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, and neurodegenerative disorders. Advances in geroscience indicate that pharmacological modulation of conserved molecular pathways may extend healthspan and delay multimorbidity. A structured narrative review of the PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science literature published between January 2010 and May 2026 was conducted, with seminal earlier studies retained where relevant. The review focused on molecular pathways implicated in aging, pharmacological interventions targeting these pathways, and their preclinical and clinical evaluation. Particular emphasis was placed on translational evidence, including human biomarker studies and randomized clinical trials, and on the distinction between biomarker modulation and clinically meaningful outcomes. Repurposed drugs such as metformin and rapamycin have among the most extensive preclinical and translational evidence, although clinical evidence for broadly applicable geroprotection remains limited. Statins, SGLT2 inhibitors, GLP-1 receptor agonists, and menopausal hormone therapy have established disease-specific or cardiometabolic benefits that may have indirect relevance to geroprotection, but direct effects on biological aging and healthspan remain unproven. Other candidates, including senolytics, NAD⁺ precursors, taurine, and epigenetic reprogramming approaches, are at different stages of translational development, with evidence ranging from promising preclinical findings to early human studies. Across interventions, a substantial gap remains between mechanistic plausibility and clinically validated geroprotection. Geroprotective pharmacology represents a promising but incompletely validated approach to extending healthspan. Major uncertainties include the absence of universally accepted biomarkers and clinical endpoints of biological aging, heterogeneity in treatment response, optimal timing and duration of interventions, and long-term safety. Future research should prioritize adequately powered randomized clinical trials integrating standardized measures of biological aging with clinically meaningful outcomes, alongside biomarker-guided patient selection, appropriate treatment timing, and careful assessment of long-term safety. The future of geroprotective medicine will depend not only on identifying additional pharmacological targets, but on demonstrating that their modulation produces durable and clinically meaningful benefits in humans. Full article

In contrast to foreign nucleic acids, some of our own endogenously synthesized nucleic acids may become immunologically active without being considered “foreign”. For example, abnormalities in chromatin organization, transcription termination, ribonucleic acid (RNA) splicing, and RNA editing, together with damage to mitochondrial integrity, may render normally functional deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and RNA persistently available and aberrantly structured ligands for innate immunity. Z-DNA-binding protein 1 (ZBP1), recently identified as an important component of this innate immune system, recognizes both left-handed DNA (Z-DNA) and left-handed RNA (Z-RNA) using its tandem Z-alpha (Zα) domains and couples recognition of these conformational states to receptor-interacting serine/threonine-protein kinase 1 (RIPK1)-, receptor-interacting serine/threonine-protein kinase 3 (RIPK3)-, and mixed-lineage kinase domain-like pseudokinase (MLKL)-dependent inflammatory and cell-death pathways. More recent studies have also shown that ZBP1 plays a role in recognizing damaged self-nucleic acids associated with tauopathies, Alzheimer’s disease (AD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), and amyloid-associated neuroinflammation. The nucleic-acid forms associated with these conditions include transposable-element activation, extended repeat-containing transcripts, RNA–RNA duplexes or RNA:DNA hybrids, oxidized mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and intercellularly transferred nucleic acids, all of which may exhibit substrate structures compatible with Z-form formation. Signaling by ZBP1 does not occur simply based upon nucleic-acid abundance; rather, signaling occurs after prolonged exposure to a nucleic acid when it persists in a structurally competent state, sufficient receptors are present to bind its exposed regions, the receptor proteoforms are competent to participate in signaling, receptor-interacting protein homotypic interaction motif (RHIM)-dependent assembly occurs, and the appropriate adaptor molecules are present. Furthermore, the identity of the cell type expressing ZBP1 determines whether the response produces RIPK3–MLKL-dependent neuronal injury, microglia-mediated inflammation, apoptosis, or mixed cell death. Finally, competition with adenosine deaminase acting on RNA 1 (ADAR1), melanoma differentiation-associated protein 5 (MDA5), double-stranded RNA-dependent protein kinase (PKR), the cyclic guanosine monophosphate–adenosine monophosphate synthase–stimulator of interferon genes (cGAS–STING) pathway, and other nucleic-acid-sensing proteins divides the available pool of endogenous nucleic acids among the outcomes of immune tolerance, type I interferon (IFN-I) signaling, translational inhibition, neuroinflammation, and necroptosis. Full article

Urban park assessment typically emphasizes vegetation quantity, yet spaces with similar greenness may still produce different visual experiences. This study aimed to identify the structural characteristics of horticultural configurations and examine their incremental predictive value for multidimensional visual perception. A total of 500 local landscape scenes were selected from 10 urban parks in Chengdu and presented as standardized photographs. One hundred and fifty participants rated 17 visual attributes on a seven-point scale. Landscape structure metrics, principal component analysis, cluster analysis, cross-park validation, and SHAP analysis revealed that horticultural configurations varied primarily along three gradients: vegetation continuity–fragmentation, geometric complexity, and patch size. These gradients formed three representative states: dense woody, open heterogeneous, and impervious fragmented configurations. Visual perception was organized into three functional domains: restorative immersion, spatial openness, and affective richness. Compared with models containing only the NDVI and greenspace coverage, adding configuration metrics increased the cross-park predictive R² by 0.257, 0.181, and 0.241 for the three perceptual domains, respectively. Vegetation aggregation and connectivity, mean patch area, and shape complexity were the primary predictors of the respective domains and exhibited stable nonlinear response patterns. This study extends park assessment from vegetation quantity to spatial organization mechanisms, providing an evidence base for perception-oriented horticultural design and helping reduce costly trial-and-error and inefficient investment in park renewal. Full article

Five studies are frequently cited as experimental evidence that photobiomodulation (PBM) may stimulate tumour growth or produce phototoxicity, contributing to a documented barrier to clinical adoption in oncology. We reappraise these studies against their own reported dosimetry. None characterised the spatial power distribution of its beam. Each was assessed for arithmetic consistency, beam profile, device category, and biological-model appropriateness, and re-examined against the Arrhenius framework for thermal damage. In four of the five, the exposures delivered lay outside the therapeutic photobiological window on the authors’ own stated parameters: surface temperatures of 55 °C and, in places, 71 °C, with injury the original authors describe as coagulation and necrosis extending to paralysis and death; irradiances approximately 25 times those used clinically; and, in one case, parameters the authors themselves describe as high. The fifth, a xenograft study, used a dose within the therapeutic range, but its immunodeficient host cannot express the immune-mediated response at issue. A sixth study, from the same group and using the same device as one of the five but operated at a therapeutic irradiance, is included as an internal control and reported therapeutic benefit. Injury in these regimes is best understood as oxygen-dependent, with temperature acting as a sensitising variable and as a marker of the regime rather than as the proximate cause, a reading supported by the original authors’ own helium-substitution, cooling and heated-probe controls. We outline a two-tier mechanistic framework, in which correctly dosed PBM may engage systemic anti-tumour immunity, as a hypothesis for prospective testing rather than as a finding of this analysis. None of these studies provides dosimetrically secure evidence of a hazard from therapeutic-range PBM; equally, the absence of such evidence is not a demonstration of safety. Beam-profile reporting should become standard in PBM oncology research. Full article

Replicating the nonlinear, pressure-dependent mechanical behavior of native arteries remains a central challenge in small-diameter vascular graft design, where compliance mismatch between synthetic grafts and host vessels is strongly linked to graft failure. Building on a silk fiber-reinforced alginate–polyacrylamide interpenetrating polymer network (IPN) hydrogel platform, we investigated whether biomimetic vascular structural motifs, specifically fiber reorientation and crimp, can be used as programmable design parameters to tune the tensile and pressure-dependent mechanical response of tubular constructs toward native coronary artery behavior. Three architectures were fabricated: a cross-plied (CP) baseline, a 25° reoriented configuration, and a crimped CP configuration. Under internal pressurization, fiber reorientation and crimp significantly increased compliance at low physiological pressures, with a consistent directional trend across the full pressure range, by extending the low-stiffness toe region preceding fiber recruitment while preserving tensile stiffness. Across the investigated pressure range, all architectures exhibited compliance within the reported range of native coronary arteries, with crimped constructs producing pressure–diameter behavior that most closely resembled young coronary arteries, whereas the CP baseline more closely resembled aged coronary arteries. These findings demonstrate that biomimetic structural motifs, without altering material composition, can serve as programmable design parameters for engineering vascular mechanics, enabling a single material platform to reproduce distinct physiological mechanical phenotypes through architecture alone. Full article

Aronia melanocarpa contains abundant phenolic compounds, including procyanidins, flavonols, flavan-3-ols, and phenolic acids, but its pronounced astringency limits its broader use in food applications. Catechol and other oxygen-donor motifs in plant phenolics are known to associate with Fe³⁺ and can support metal–phenolic assembly. In this study, ultrasound-assisted cellulase–pectinase extraction was used to recover an A. melanocarpa polyphenol extract, which was subsequently combined with Fe³⁺ to construct a plant-derived hair dye coating on keratin fibers. Under optimized extraction conditions, the total phenolic yield reached 82.315 mg gallic acid equivalents (GAE)/g dry fruit. A limited targeted LC–MS/MS panel was used to evaluate 12 selected non-anthocyanin phenolic analytes, including procyanidin dimers, a flavan-3-ol, flavonols, and phenolic acids; the contribution of the pH-sensitive anthocyanin fraction was not resolved. Among the tested metal ions, Fe³⁺ produced the strongest chromogenic response. The optimized L-cysteine pretreatment–Fe³⁺ mordanting–polyphenol dyeing sequence produced a ΔE* of 55.42. Adsorption experiments empirically described the uptake behavior of the polyphenol extract, whereas complementary surface, spectroscopic, elemental, diffraction, thermal, and wettability analyses were consistent with the presence of a relatively uniform Fe-containing polyphenol coating at the hair fiber interface. Neither the adsorption-model fits nor the individual characterization techniques uniquely resolved the underlying molecular mechanism. Preliminary HET-CAM, single-exposure dermal, and acute eye irritation assessments showed no obvious acute irritation under the tested conditions. An exploratory image-based analysis examined whether standardized hair tress photographs could approximate a predefined colorimetric score. Because only 30 independent original samples were available and no external validation was performed, this analysis was treated solely as a proof of concept. This laboratory proof-of-concept extends established Fe³⁺–polyphenol assembly chemistry to a compositionally complex A. melanocarpa extract for hair fiber coloration. Further work is required to clarify anthocyanin behavior, simplify the sequential protocol, and benchmark its performance against representative commercial hair dyes. Full article

Ultraviolet (UV) radiation in high-altitude regions critically accelerates asphalt aging by inducing surface oxidation, molecular chain scission, and loss of low-temperature crack resistance. However, systematic comparisons of the macro-rheological and micro-chemical evolution between base asphalt and SBS-modified asphalt under UV aging remain insufficient. In this study, two types of asphalt (virgin and SBS-modified) were subjected to three aging protocols, namely short-term thermal oxidation (RTFOT), long-term thermal oxidation (PAV), and equivalent UV radiation for 13 h, 26 h, and 37 h. Low-temperature rheological properties were evaluated using the bending beam rheometer (BBR), while atomic force microscopy (AFM) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) characterized the microstructural and chemical changes. The results show that long-term thermal oxidation causes the most severe deterioration of low-temperature rheological performance, whereas short-term thermal oxidation and 13 h UV aging exhibit comparable effects. For SBS-modified asphalt, extending UV exposure from 13 h to 37 h leads to progressive stiffening and loss of relaxation capacity at −12 °C and −18 °C. However, the m-value shows a non-monotonic response at −24 °C, indicating that the temperature dependence of UV aging is more complex at extremely low temperature. For base asphalt, aging promotes the formation and subsequent agglomeration of bee-like structures. For SBS-modified asphalt, the sulfoxide index increases monotonically, while the carbonyl index first increases and then decreases. Although 13 h UV aging and RTFOT produce similar macroscopic outcomes, their mechanisms differ fundamentally, where UV aging is hypothesized to act primarily via photon-induced bond scission, whereas thermal oxidation proceeds through radical chain reactions. Full article