Search Results (1,422)

Background/Objectives: War-related mandibular injuries result in extensive soft-tissue damage, severe comminution, and bone loss, and are associated with high rates of infection and delayed healing. No universally accepted management protocol exists for these injuries. External fixation is commonly used in this context, particularly when internal fixation is unavailable or contraindicated. This study aimed to analyze injury patterns, treatment outcomes, and complications of war-related mandibular fractures treated with external fixation as a primary and definitive stabilization method in a resource-limited setting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Methods: A retrospective review was conducted of all patients who sustained war-related mandibular fractures and were treated with external fixation between January 2017 and December 2024 at the Hôpital Provincial Général de Référence de Bukavu. Demographic data, injury characteristics, treatment details, outcomes, and complications were collected. Factors associated with delayed union and fracture-related infection were evaluated using univariate analysis. Results: Ninety-one patients with severe mandibular war injuries were included. High-velocity gunshot wounds accounted for 94.5% of injuries. Clinical evidence of wound infection at admission was present in 29.7% of patients. The mean delay between injury and external fixation was 9.2 ± 6.6 days. Successful bone healing without secondary bone procedures was achieved in 71 patients (78.0%), with a mean healing time of 7.6 ± 3.0 weeks. Delayed bone grafting was required in 20 patients (22.0%), performed at a mean of 77.3 ± 30.5 days after initial fixation. The overall complication rate was 36.3%, with fracture-site infection being the most frequent complication (30.8%). Bone loss at presentation, clinical infection at admission, and the need for bone grafting were significantly associated with fracture-related infection (p < 0.05). Conclusions: War-related mandibular fractures in this series were characterized by severe comminution, bone loss, infection, and delayed presentation. Despite these challenges, external fixation provided acceptable fracture healing and functional outcomes. Small orthopedic external fixators represent a pragmatic and effective treatment option for complex mandibular war injuries in resource-limited settings. Full article

Chromosome dynamics, recombination, and nucleolar organization intersect during meiotic prophase I, yet how the recombination context influences nucleolar architecture remains unclear. We analyzed the nucleolar pool of Cdc14 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae under matched prophase I gating and a uniform, frame-based operational definition of transient two-focus episodes. In a prophase-arrest reference, Cdc14–mCherry formed a predominant single nucleolar focus with occasional, reversible two-focus episodes that Nop56–GFP placed within the nucleolar compartment (nucleolar splitting). Splitting rose sharply when interhomolog recombination was compromised and remained elevated when Spo11 catalytic activity was abolished, indicating that increased DSB formation is not required and pointing instead to the homolog engagement state as a key variable. Population checkpoint readouts did not map onto the phenotype: Hop1 phosphorylation differed strongly across genotypes, yet splitting remained high in recombination-defective and DSB-free contexts and low in the reference. Timing analyses showed that events concentrated early and declined in the reference, whereas recombination-defective and DSB-free backgrounds retained activity into later windows across thresholds. We propose that nucleolar splitting reflects a rheological response of the nucleolus to chromosome-scale forces that vary with homolog engagement, consistent with contributions from DSB-independent chromosome dynamics such as telomere clustering, telomere-led rapid prophase movements, and centromere coupling/pairing. Together, these data support the nucleolus as a mesoscale, mechanically sensitive readout of meiotic chromosome dynamics. Full article

To enhance the power supply resilience of distribution networks with high-penetration distributed photovoltaic (PV) integration during extreme disasters, deploying Mobile Energy Storage Systems (MESSs) proves to be an effective countermeasure. This paper proposes an optimized operational strategy for distribution networks, integrating coordinated clustering of distributed PV systems and MESS operation to ensure power supply during both pre-disaster prevention and post-disaster restoration phases. In the pre-disaster prevention phase, an improved Louvain algorithm is first applied for PV clustering to improve source-load matching efficiency within each cluster, thereby enhancing intra-cluster power supply security. Subsequently, under the worst-case scenarios of PV output fluctuations, a robust optimization algorithm is utilized to optimize the pre-deployment scheme of MESS. In the post-disaster restoration phase, cluster re-partitioning is performed with the goal of minimizing load shedding to ensure power supply, followed by reoptimizing the scheduling of MESS deployment and its charging/discharging power to maximize the improvement of load power supply security. Simulations on a modified IEEE 123-bus distribution network, which includes two MESS units and twenty-four PV systems, demonstrate that the proposed strategy improved the overall restoration rate from 68.98% to 86.89% and increased the PV utilization rate from 47.05% to 86.25% over the baseline case, confirming its significant effectiveness. Full article

Background: Parental burnout is a state of extreme exhaustion that is detrimental to family life. There is some evidence, albeit limited, that children of exhausted parents are at risk of neglect or abuse. The children’s lived experience remains an underinvestigated issue. This qualitative and participatory study aimed to explore children’s and adolescents’ perceptions and experience of parental burnout, as well as the resources they identify as available to assist them. Methods: We interviewed 24 children of exhausted parents, including children typically developing (n = 17), children with illness/disability (n = 3), and children with learning/behavioral difficulties (n = 4). We used interactive data collection tools, adapted to the participants’ age. The interviews were followed by a participatory validation seminar. Results: We evidenced a high emotional burden experienced by children exposed to parental burden. The children conveyed feeling insecure about what happens, perceiving a mismatch between their own needs and those of their parents, and being afraid both of and for their parents. Conclusions: Our results call for an increased recognition of parental burnout as not only a personal or family problem, but a possibly important societal and public health concern, with implications for child prevention and health promotion. Full article

The literature on derivative pricing in illiquid markets has mostly focused on computing optimal hedging controls, but empirical microstructure studies show that large order flow generates persistent and predictable price effects. Therefore, these controls can themselves induce endogenous market manipulation because traders can internalize the impact of their own trades. We identify the key shortcoming as the absence of a formal separation between a large trader’s informational advantage and the mechanical price impact and temporary cost-of-hedging. To address this gap, we introduce a counterfactual informed observer—an agent who knows the large trader’s strategy but does not face trading frictions—and use this device to isolate informational order-flow effects from mechanical price impact, a distinction explicitly observed in microstructure data. We prove the existence of information-neutral probability measures under which the discounted asset is a martingale for this observer and derive a hedging framework that jointly accounts for transaction costs and permanent market impact. Numerical experiments show that because price pressure and order-flow effects create non-linear execution costs, the optimal hedge for an out-of-the-money call can deviate substantially from the Black–Scholes hedge, with implications for risk management and regulatory monitoring. Full article

The occurrence of filter bubbles and echo chambers in social media recommendation systems poses a significant threat to information diversity and democratic discourse. Although graph neural networks (GNNs) achieve leading accuracy in user recommendation, their optimization for engagement metrics inadvertently reinforces homophily, creating isolated information ecosystems. This research developed community-aware two-stage diversification with GNNs (CATD-GNN), a method that leverages the inherent community structure of social networks to promote diversity without sacrificing recommendation quality. CATD-GNN integrates community detection with GNN learning through a two-stage diversification process. The proposed method employs the Louvain method to identify community structures as pseudo-categories, then applies submodular neighbor selection and community-based loss reweighting during GNN training (Stage 1), followed by coverage and redundancy-aware reranking (Stage 2). Twitter data capturing Black Lives Matter discourse and Reddit political discussion networks were used to evaluate the method. CATD-GNN achieves improvements in diversity metrics while maintaining competitive accuracy. The two-stage architecture demonstrates a synergistic effect: the combination of diversity-aware training and coverage-based reranking produces greater improvements than either component alone. The proposed method successfully identifies and recommends users from different communities while preserving recommendation relevance. Full article

This study presents a comprehensive bibliographic and semantic analysis of 3957 scientific publications on artificial intelligence (AI) in government and public administration. Using an integrated text- and network-based approach, we identify the main thematic areas and conceptual orientations shaping this rapidly expanding field. The analysis reveals a research landscape that spans AI-driven administrative transformation, digital innovation, ethics and accountability, citizen trust, sustainability, and domain-specific applications such as healthcare and education. Across these themes, policy-oriented and conceptual contributions remain prominent, while empirical and technical studies are increasingly interwoven, reflecting growing interdisciplinarity and methodological consolidation. By clarifying how AI research aligns with governance values and institutional design, this study offers actionable insights for policymakers and public managers seeking to navigate responsible public-sector AI adoption. Overall, the findings indicate that AI-for-Government research is moving from fragmented debates toward a more integrated, implementation-relevant knowledge base centered on trustworthy and value-aligned digital-era governance. Full article

The rapid growth of dockless electric scooter (e-scooter) sharing services has transformed short-distance urban mobility, offering convenience and sustainability benefits while amplifying challenges related to demand imbalance, fleet rebalancing, and spatial inequity. Accurate spatiotemporal demand prediction is therefore essential for optimizing resource allocation and supporting data-driven policy interventions. This study proposes a hybrid deep learning framework that integrates a Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) with a Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) and community detection to enhance short-term prediction of e-scooter pick-up and drop-off demands. The Louvain algorithm is employed to partition urban areas into mobility-based communities, enabling the model to capture functional connectivity rather than relying solely on geographic proximity. Using real-world e-scooter trip data from Calgary, Canada, the model’s performance is evaluated against established baselines, including a Masked Fully Convolutional Network (MFCN) and conventional GRU architectures. Results show that the proposed approach achieves up to 11.8% improvement in mean absolute error (MAE) compared with the MFCN baseline and more robust generalization across temporal horizons. The findings demonstrate that integrating community structures into graph-based learning effectively captures complex urban dynamics, providing practical insights for sustainable micromobility operation and service deployment. Full article

Community detection in social networks is one of the most important topics of network science. Researchers have developed numerous methods from various perspectives. However, the existing methods often overlook the team information encoded as a special type of user relation in the social network, which plays an important role in community formation and evolution. In this paper, we propose a novel community detection algorithm called Team-aware Community Detection (TaCD). Our model constructs a multi-view network by encoding the user interaction information as the user view and the team information as the team view. To measure the consistency across the two views, we use the Jaccard similarity to establish a cross-view coupling. Based on the constructed 2-view network, we use multi-view modularity to discover team-aware community structure, and solve the optimization problem using the well-known Generalized Louvain approach. Another contribution of this paper is the collection of a new SCHOLAT dataset, which consists of several social networks with team information and is publicly available for testing purposes. Our experimental results on several SCHOLAT networks with team information demonstrate that TaCD outperforms the existing community detection algorithms. Full article

Head and neck cancer surgery has evolved from radical organ-sacrificing procedures to function-preserving approaches integrated within multidisciplinary frameworks. This comprehensive literature review, concentrating on studies from the past five years while incorporating relevant publications from the last three decades and landmark historical papers, examines the evolving role of surgery emphasizing diagnostic methodologies including comprehensive genomic profiling, validated imaging biomarkers, and their clinical integration for treatment selection and response prediction. Modern surgical practice demonstrates a paradigm shift toward precision medicine through validated diagnostic technologies. Comprehensive genomic profiling identifies clinically actionable alterations in over 90% of head and neck squamous cell carcinomas, with tumor mutational burden serving as a validated predictive biomarker for immunotherapy response. Programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) combined positive score functions as a validated diagnostic biomarker for immunotherapy efficacy, demonstrating significant clinical benefit in biomarker-selected populations. Radiomics-based predictive models utilizing machine learning algorithms achieve diagnostic accuracies exceeding 85% for treatment response prediction when validated across independent cohorts. Quantitative ultrasound spectroscopy combined with magnetic resonance imaging radiomics demonstrates high sensitivity and specificity for radiation response prediction. Habitat imaging techniques characterizing tumor microenvironmental heterogeneity predict pathologic complete response to neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy with area under the curve values approaching 0.90 in validation studies. Integration of these diagnostic methodologies enables response-adaptive treatment strategies, with neoadjuvant chemotherapy facilitating mandibular preservation and adjuvant therapy omission in over half of human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cases following surgical downstaging. Clinical validation of these diagnostic platforms enables accurate treatment response prediction and informed surgical decision-making, though standardization across institutions and demonstration of survival benefits through prospective trials remain essential for broader implementation. Full article

Carbon nanocomposites are essential supports in fuel cell catalysts, ensuring dispersion, anchoring, and reactant access. Here, we demonstrated an in situ synthesis of Pd nanoparticles using electrogenerated hydrophilic carbon (EHC) matrix that acts simultaneously as Pd support and reducing agent. To further enhance oxygen availability, a second EHC form with high oxygen storage capacity was integrated. The resulting material was characterized in terms of its electrochemical behaviour and long-term stability and compared with a nanocomposite without the O₂-storing component. A time-dependent decline in electrolyte access to Pd sites was observed in both, but substantially mitigated at long-term by the oxygen-storing component. Full article

The gliding arc plasma technique (glidarc) was used for the precipitation and deposition of Mn or Fe oxides on zirconia fibers. Two types of fibers were used: commercial (Fib Zr(C)) and biomorphic (Fib Zr(B)) ZrO₂ fibers, the latter produced using cotton as a biotemplate. Both series of supported catalysts were characterized physicochemically and morphologically. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) analyses showed that Fib Zr(B) largely retained the morphology of cotton. Fib Zr(B) presented the tetragonal phase (t-ZrO₂), while Fib Zr(C) exhibited the monoclinic phase (m-ZrO₂). Using X-ray Diffraction (XRD), the cryptomelane phase (K_xMn₈O₁₆) was identified only for Mn-Fib Zr(B). In the case of Fe-supported samples, the α-Fe₂O₃ phase appeared clearly in both biomorphic and commercial fibers. SEM and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) images revealed that the precipitated iron oxides appeared to be better distributed than the manganese oxides, covering the outer surface of the fibrous supports more homogeneously. X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) confirmed that Mn has an average oxidation state between 3+ and 4+, consistent with the cryptomelane phase detected by XRD. The synthesized supported systems were tested as catalysts in soot and CO oxidation, with the Mn-supported fibers proving to be more active than their Fe-containing counterparts in both reactions. Full article

Proton binding (i.e., charging) isotherms of halloysite nanotubes (HNT) were determined from cycled acid-base potentiometric titrations in KCl solution at constant ionic strengths (0.01, 0.10, 1.00 mol dm⁻³). The isotherms measured in the pH cycle from 3 to 11 and back exhibit a pronounced hysteresis with respect to the direction of pH change, which is accurately reproducible when the cycle is repeated. The hysteresis is absent if the cycled titration is performed within a narrow pH range between 5 and 9. These results align with the dissolution rates of alumina and silica, which form the two surfaces of the rolled kaolinite sheet in HNT, and clearly point to reversible partial dissolution-deposition processes in the HNT interior during a titration cycle, outside the above pH range (alumina dissolution below pH ≈ 5 and silica dissolution above pH ≈ 8.5). In the studied titration experiments, these processes produce partially dissolved surface-bound, rather than completely dissolved species (reversible surface etching). Under the applied conditions, reversible surface etching is less pronounced in the acidic part of the titration cycle. Charging isotherms recorded in the decreasing pH titrations at varied ionic strength exhibit a common intersection point very close to zero charge (point of zero charge) around pH ≈ 8.1, characteristic for an amphoteric solid surface. These isotherms were reasonably well fitted by applying the surface protonation model in the HNT interior, which invokes the Stern model of the electric double layer (EDL), by summing the surface charges calculated for alumina and silica as separate components (surfaces). The model surface charge isotherms for alumina surface in the HNT interior exhibit a point of zero charge at pH = 9.0, while the silica surface has a negative charge above pH > 8.5, which is in very good agreement with the values reported in the literature: as for these two surfaces, thus for kaolinite nanoparticles. The best-fit protonation site density for both surfaces is equal to 8.0 nm⁻², while the best-fit intrinsic pK_a for alumina and silica surfaces of HNT are equal to 9.0 and 8.5, respectively. The pH-dependence of electrophoretic mobility, measured by means of electrophoretic light scattering, reveals a more acidic behavior of the outermost silica surface than within the inner HNT phase, which is consistent with the literature result reported for kaolinite. The results reported herein confirm that the inner and outer surfaces of the HNT are oppositely charged below pH < 8.0 and negatively charged above that value, and importantly, they reveal new details about the protonation affinities and EDL parameters at active surfaces of HNT, important for the colloidal stability of HNT suspensions and the functionalization of HNT through the electrostatic binding of active molecules. Full article

Background: Numerous protocols exist concerning the decellularization of the esophagus, a potential alternative to the classical surgical approach for the reconstruction of the digestive tract after esophagectomy. This systematic literature review (SLR) aimed to provide an overview of the effectiveness of the current protocols. Methods: This SLR was conducted in PubMed, EMBASE, and Scopus until September 2025. Study selection, data extraction, and quality assessment were performed by two independent reviewers according to the inclusion/exclusion criteria. Results: A total of 2494 references were screened after removing duplicates. Among these references, 26 articles were included. The large majority of studies (24/26) used Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate (SDS) or Sodium DeoxyCholate (SDC), and the most common physical method was the cannulation of the esophagus (17/26). The animal model was very heterogenous. All protocols except one showed no residual cell nuclei, with only 5/19 papers confirming a satisfactory residual amount of DNA. The assessment of the extracellular matrix (ECM)—mostly qualitative—revealed global preservation but with a systematic loss of glycosaminoglycans (GAGs). Conclusions: The decellularization of the esophagus is feasible, but the definition of the optimal protocol to achieve this goal remains difficult because of the important heterogeneity among the different studies. Full article

Background: Fibromuscular dysplasia (FMD) is a non-inflammatory vascular disorder that affects medium and large arteries, with a notable association with intracranial aneurysms (IAs). This review aims to assess the prevalence, characteristics, and implications of IAs in patients with FMD, highlighting gaps in current knowledge and the need for further research. Methods: A comprehensive literature search was conducted on PubMed using keywords related to FMD and intracranial aneurysms. The search focused on studies published over the last 28 years, identifying relevant data on the prevalence and morphological features of IAs in FMD patients. Due to the limited quality and availability of information, a narrative review format was adopted to synthesize findings. Results: The review found that the prevalence of IAs in FMD patients is significantly higher than in the general population, with estimates varying widely (4.7–21.7%). The majority of patients identified with IAs were female, and the age range of affected individuals varied significantly. Key risk factors for aneurysm formation included hypertension, smoking, and the presence of multifocal or multisite FMD. Notably, the study indicated that routine screening for IAs in FMD patients has to be weighted with the relatively low prevalence of asymptomatic IAs and the risk-to-benefit ratio of treatment in older patients. Conclusions: The association between FMD and intracranial aneurysms is significant, and timely detection of these aneurysms may allow preventing subarachnoid hemorrhage, whose fatality rate is high. Identification of subgroups where the screening may be cost-effective, also considering the impact of the awareness to have an IA without treatment proposal, is warranted. Further research is essential to clarify the relationship between FMD and IAs, optimize screening protocols, and improve outcomes for affected patients. The findings underscore the importance of ongoing registries to enhance understanding of the natural history and treatment of IAs in the context of FMD. Full article