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21 pages, 463 KiB  
Article
Do Industrial Support Policies Help Overcome Innovation Inertia in Traditional Sectors?
by Hui Liu and Yaodong Zhou
Economies 2025, 13(7), 206; https://doi.org/10.3390/economies13070206 - 17 Jul 2025
Abstract
Enhancing innovation capability can effectively promote the development of traditional industries. Based on Lewin’s behavioral model theory, this study investigated the relationship between industrial support policies and innovation behavior within traditional industries. Utilizing survey data collected from 152 traditional industrial enterprises in 2024 [...] Read more.
Enhancing innovation capability can effectively promote the development of traditional industries. Based on Lewin’s behavioral model theory, this study investigated the relationship between industrial support policies and innovation behavior within traditional industries. Utilizing survey data collected from 152 traditional industrial enterprises in 2024 and employing structural equation modeling, the main findings are as follows: Industrial support policies can effectively alleviate the “innovation inertia” of traditional industries, with all policies being significant at the 1% confidence level. Among them, policies related to industry–university–research cooperation platforms have the most significant impact, with a standardized coefficient of 0.941, followed by fiscal and taxation policies (standardized coefficient: 0.846) and financial policies (standardized coefficient: 0.729). Innovation motivation acts as a mediating mechanism between industrial policies and innovation behavior. Industrial support policies accelerate the conversion of reserve-oriented patent portfolios into practical applications, helping to break through patent barriers and effectively alleviate innovation inertia. Consequently, the government should prioritize improving public services, and policy formulation needs to be oriented towards enhancing innovation efficiency. While ensuring industrial security, it is advisable to moderately increase competition to guide traditional industry market players towards thriving in competitive environments. Full article
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28 pages, 10262 KiB  
Article
Driving Forces and Future Scenario Simulation of Urban Agglomeration Expansion in China: A Case Study of the Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration
by Zeduo Zou, Xiuyan Zhao, Shuyuan Liu and Chunshan Zhou
Remote Sens. 2025, 17(14), 2455; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs17142455 - 15 Jul 2025
Viewed by 159
Abstract
The remote sensing monitoring of land use changes and future scenario simulation hold crucial significance for accurately characterizing urban expansion patterns, optimizing urban land use configurations, and thereby promoting coordinated regional development. Through the integration of multi-source data, this study systematically analyzes the [...] Read more.
The remote sensing monitoring of land use changes and future scenario simulation hold crucial significance for accurately characterizing urban expansion patterns, optimizing urban land use configurations, and thereby promoting coordinated regional development. Through the integration of multi-source data, this study systematically analyzes the spatiotemporal trajectories and driving forces of land use changes in the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration (PRD) from 1990 to 2020 and further simulates the spatial patterns of urban land use under diverse development scenarios from 2025 to 2035. The results indicate the following: (1) During 1990–2020, urban expansion in the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration exhibited a “stepwise growth” pattern, with an annual expansion rate of 3.7%. Regional land use remained dominated by forest (accounting for over 50%), while construction land surged from 6.5% to 21.8% of total land cover. The gravity center trajectory shifted southeastward. Concurrently, cropland fragmentation has intensified, accompanied by deteriorating connectivity of ecological lands. (2) Urban expansion in the PRD arises from synergistic interactions between natural and socioeconomic drivers. The Geographically and Temporally Weighted Regression (GTWR) model revealed that natural constraints—elevation (regression coefficients ranging −0.35 to −0.05) and river network density (−0.47 to −0.15)—exhibited significant spatial heterogeneity. Socioeconomic drivers dominated by year-end paved road area (0.26–0.28) and foreign direct investment (0.03–0.11) emerged as core expansion catalysts. Geographic detector analysis demonstrated pronounced interaction effects: all factor pairs exhibited either two-factor enhancement or nonlinear enhancement effects, with interaction explanatory power surpassing individual factors. (3) Validation of the Patch-generating Land Use Simulation (PLUS) model showed high reliability (Kappa coefficient = 0.9205, overall accuracy = 95.9%). Under the Natural Development Scenario, construction land would exceed the ecological security baseline, causing 408.60 km2 of ecological space loss; Under the Ecological Protection Scenario, mandatory control boundaries could reduce cropland and forest loss by 3.04%, albeit with unused land development intensity rising to 24.09%; Under the Economic Development Scenario, cross-city contiguous development zones along the Pearl River Estuary would emerge, with land development intensity peaking in Guangzhou–Foshan and Shenzhen–Dongguan border areas. This study deciphers the spatiotemporal dynamics, driving mechanisms, and scenario outcomes of urban agglomeration expansion, providing critical insights for formulating regionally differentiated policies. Full article
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35 pages, 2297 KiB  
Article
Secure Cooperative Dual-RIS-Aided V2V Communication: An Evolutionary Transformer–GRU Framework for Secrecy Rate Maximization in Vehicular Networks
by Elnaz Bashir, Francisco Hernando-Gallego, Diego Martín and Farzaneh Shoushtari
World Electr. Veh. J. 2025, 16(7), 396; https://doi.org/10.3390/wevj16070396 - 14 Jul 2025
Viewed by 57
Abstract
The growing demand for reliable and secure vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication in next-generation intelligent transportation systems has accelerated the adoption of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) as a means of enhancing link quality, spectral efficiency, and physical layer security. In this paper, we investigate the [...] Read more.
The growing demand for reliable and secure vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication in next-generation intelligent transportation systems has accelerated the adoption of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) as a means of enhancing link quality, spectral efficiency, and physical layer security. In this paper, we investigate the problem of secrecy rate maximization in a cooperative dual-RIS-aided V2V communication network, where two cascaded RISs are deployed to collaboratively assist with secure data transmission between mobile vehicular nodes in the presence of eavesdroppers. To address the inherent complexity of time-varying wireless channels, we propose a novel evolutionary transformer-gated recurrent unit (Evo-Transformer-GRU) framework that jointly learns temporal channel patterns and optimizes the RIS reflection coefficients, beam-forming vectors, and cooperative communication strategies. Our model integrates the sequence modeling strength of GRUs with the global attention mechanism of transformer encoders, enabling the efficient representation of time-series channel behavior and long-range dependencies. To further enhance convergence and secrecy performance, we incorporate an improved gray wolf optimizer (IGWO) to adaptively regulate the model’s hyper-parameters and fine-tune the RIS phase shifts, resulting in a more stable and optimized learning process. Extensive simulations demonstrate the superiority of the proposed framework compared to existing baselines, such as transformer, bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT), deep reinforcement learning (DRL), long short-term memory (LSTM), and GRU models. Specifically, our method achieves an up to 32.6% improvement in average secrecy rate and a 28.4% lower convergence time under varying channel conditions and eavesdropper locations. In addition to secrecy rate improvements, the proposed model achieved a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.05, coefficient of determination (R2) score of 0.96, and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of just 0.73%, outperforming all baseline methods in prediction accuracy and robustness. Furthermore, Evo-Transformer-GRU demonstrated rapid convergence within 100 epochs, the lowest variance across multiple runs. Full article
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19 pages, 3841 KiB  
Article
An Improved Chosen Plaintext Attack on JPEG Encryption
by Junhui He, Kaitian Gu, Yihan Huang, Yue Li and Xiang Chen
J. Sens. Actuator Netw. 2025, 14(4), 72; https://doi.org/10.3390/jsan14040072 - 14 Jul 2025
Viewed by 123
Abstract
Format-compatible encryption can be used to ensure the security and privacy of JPEG images. Recently, a JPEG image encryption method proved to be secure against known plaintext attacks by employing an adaptive encryption key, which depends on the histogram of the number of [...] Read more.
Format-compatible encryption can be used to ensure the security and privacy of JPEG images. Recently, a JPEG image encryption method proved to be secure against known plaintext attacks by employing an adaptive encryption key, which depends on the histogram of the number of non-zero alternating current coefficients (ACC) in Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) blocks. However, this scheme has been demonstrated to be vulnerable to chosen-plaintext attacks (CPA) based on the run consistency of MCUs (RCM) between the original image and the encrypted image. In this paper, an improved CPA scheme is proposed. The method of incrementing run-length values instead of permutation is utilized to satisfy the uniqueness of run sequences of different minimum coded units (MCUs). The experimental results show that the proposed method can successfully recover the outlines of plaintext images from the encrypted images, even with lower-quality factors. Full article
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30 pages, 34212 KiB  
Article
Spatiotemporal Mapping and Driving Mechanism of Crop Planting Patterns on the Jianghan Plain Based on Multisource Remote Sensing Fusion and Sample Migration
by Pengnan Xiao, Yong Zhou, Jianping Qian, Yujie Liu and Xigui Li
Remote Sens. 2025, 17(14), 2417; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs17142417 - 12 Jul 2025
Viewed by 160
Abstract
The accurate mapping of crop planting patterns is vital for sustainable agriculture and food security, particularly in regions with complex cropping systems and limited cloud-free observations. This research focuses on the Jianghan Plain in southern China, where diverse planting structures and persistent cloud [...] Read more.
The accurate mapping of crop planting patterns is vital for sustainable agriculture and food security, particularly in regions with complex cropping systems and limited cloud-free observations. This research focuses on the Jianghan Plain in southern China, where diverse planting structures and persistent cloud cover make consistent monitoring challenging. We integrated multi-temporal Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 imagery from 2017 to 2021 on the Google Earth Engine platform and applied a sample migration strategy to construct multi-year training data. A random forest classifier was used to identify nine major planting patterns at a 10 m resolution. The classification achieved an average overall accuracy of 88.3%, with annual Kappa coefficients ranging from 0.81 to 0.88. A spatial analysis revealed that single rice was the dominant pattern, covering more than 60% of the area. Temporal variations in cropping patterns were categorized into four frequency levels (0, 1, 2, and 3 changes), with more dynamic transitions concentrated in the central-western and northern subregions. A multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) model revealed that economic and production-related factors had strong positive associations with crop planting patterns, while natural factors showed relatively weaker explanatory power. This research presents a scalable method for mapping fine-resolution crop patterns in complex agroecosystems, providing quantitative support for regional land-use optimization and the development of agricultural policies. Full article
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22 pages, 6526 KiB  
Article
Creating Blood Analogs to Mimic Steady-State Non-Newtonian Shear-Thinning Characteristics Under Various Thermal Conditions
by Hang Yi, Alexander Wang, Christopher Wang, Jared Chong, Chungyiu Ma, Luke Bramlage, Bryan Ludwig and Zifeng Yang
Bioengineering 2025, 12(7), 758; https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering12070758 - 12 Jul 2025
Viewed by 238
Abstract
Blood analogs are widely employed in in vitro experiments such as particle image velocity (PIV) to secure hemodynamics, assisting pathophysiological diagnoses of neurovascular and cardiovascular diseases, as well as pre-surgical planning and intraoperative orientation. To obtain accurate physical parameters, which are critical for [...] Read more.
Blood analogs are widely employed in in vitro experiments such as particle image velocity (PIV) to secure hemodynamics, assisting pathophysiological diagnoses of neurovascular and cardiovascular diseases, as well as pre-surgical planning and intraoperative orientation. To obtain accurate physical parameters, which are critical for diagnosis and treatment, blood analogs should exhibit realistic non-Newtonian shear-thinning features. In this study, two types of blood analogs working under room temperature (293.15 K) were created to mimic the steady-state shear-thinning features of blood over a temperature range of 295 to 312 K and a shear range of 1~250 s−1 at a hematocrit of ~40%. Type I was a general-purpose analog composed of deionized (DI) water and xanthan gum (XG) powder, while Type II was specially designed for PIV tests, incorporating DI water, XG, and fluorescent microspheres. By minimizing the root mean square deviation between generated blood analogs and an established viscosity model, formulas for both blood analogs were successfully derived for the designated temperatures. The results showed that both blood analogs could replicate the shear-thinning viscosities of real blood, with the averaged relative discrepancy < 5%. Additionally, a strong linear correlation was observed between body temperature and XG concentration in both blood analogs (coefficient of determination > 0.96): for Type I, 295–312 K correlates with 140–520 ppm, and for Type II, 295–315 K correlates with 200–560 ppm. This work bridges the gap between idealized steady-state non-Newtonian viscosity models of blood and the complexities of real-world physiological conditions, offering a versatile platform for advancing particle image velocimetry tests and hemodynamics modeling, optimizing therapeutic interventions, and enhancing biomedical technologies in temperature-sensitive environments. Full article
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19 pages, 3719 KiB  
Article
Simulating the Impacts of Climate Change on the Hydrology of Doğancı Dam in Bursa, Turkey, Using Feed-Forward Neural Networks
by Aslıhan Katip and Asifa Anwar
Sustainability 2025, 17(14), 6273; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17146273 - 9 Jul 2025
Viewed by 293
Abstract
Climate change continues to pose significant challenges to global water security, with dams being particularly vulnerable to hydrological cycle alterations. This study investigated the climate-based impact on the hydrology of the Doğancı dam, located in Bursa, Turkey, using feed-forward neural networks (FNNs). The [...] Read more.
Climate change continues to pose significant challenges to global water security, with dams being particularly vulnerable to hydrological cycle alterations. This study investigated the climate-based impact on the hydrology of the Doğancı dam, located in Bursa, Turkey, using feed-forward neural networks (FNNs). The modeling used meteorological parameters as inputs. The employed FNN comprised one input, hidden, and output layer. The efficacy of the models was evaluated by comparing the correlation coefficients (R), mean squared errors (MSE), and mean absolute percentage errors (MAPE). Furthermore, two training algorithms, namely Levenberg-Marquardt and resilient backpropagation, were employed to determine the algorithm that yields more accurate output predictions. The findings of the study showed that the model using air temperature, solar radiation, solar intensity, evaporation, and evapotranspiration as predictors for the water budget and water level of the Doğancı dam exhibited the lowest MSE (0.59) and MAPE (1.31%) and the highest R (0.99) compared to other models under LM training. The statistical analysis determined no significant difference (p > 0.05) between the Levenberg and Marquardt and resilient backpropagation training algorithms. However, a visual interpretation revealed that the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm outperformed the resilient backpropagation, yielding lower errors, higher correlation values, and faster convergence for the models tested in this study. The novelty of this study lies in the use of certain meteorological inputs, particularly snow depth, for dam inflow forecasting, which has seldom been explored. Moreover, this study compared two widely used ANN training algorithms and applied the modeling framework to a region of strategic importance for Turkey’s water security. This study highlights the effectiveness of ANN-based modeling for hydrological forecasting and determining climate-induced impacts on water bodies such as dams and reservoirs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Topic Advances in Environmental Hydraulics)
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19 pages, 5353 KiB  
Article
Adaptive Symmetry Self-Matching for 3D Point Cloud Completion of Occluded Tomato Fruits in Complex Canopy Environments
by Wenqin Wang, Chengda Lin, Haiyu Shui, Ke Zhang and Ruifang Zhai
Plants 2025, 14(13), 2080; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants14132080 - 7 Jul 2025
Viewed by 281
Abstract
As a globally important cash crop, the optimization of tomato yield and quality is strategically significant for food security and sustainable agricultural development. In order to address the problem of missing point cloud data on fruits in a facility agriculture environment due to [...] Read more.
As a globally important cash crop, the optimization of tomato yield and quality is strategically significant for food security and sustainable agricultural development. In order to address the problem of missing point cloud data on fruits in a facility agriculture environment due to complex canopy structure, leaf shading and limited collection viewpoints, the traditional geometric fitting method makes it difficult to restore the real morphology of fruits due to the dependence on data integrity. This study proposes an adaptive symmetry self-matching (ASSM) algorithm. It dynamically adjusts symmetry planes by detecting defect region characteristics in real time, implements point cloud completion under multi-symmetry constraints and constructs a triple-orthogonal symmetry plane system to adapt to multi-directional heterogeneous structures under complex occlusion. Experiments conducted on 150 tomato fruits with 5–70% occlusion rates demonstrate that ASSM achieved coefficient of determination (R2) values of 0.9914 (length), 0.9880 (width) and 0.9349 (height) under high occlusion, reducing the root mean square error (RMSE) by 23.51–56.10% compared with traditional ellipsoid fitting. Further validation on eggplant fruits confirmed the cross-crop adaptability of the method. The proposed ASSM method overcomes conventional techniques’ data integrity dependency, providing high-precision three-dimensional (3D) data for monitoring plant growth and enabling accurate phenotyping in smart agricultural systems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modeling of Plants Phenotyping and Biomass)
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16 pages, 679 KiB  
Article
The Effect of Urban–Rural Public Service Gaps on Consumption Gaps Under the Perspective of Sustainable Development: Evidence from China
by Zeyu Wang, Chenyang Liu and Yuan Tian
Sustainability 2025, 17(13), 6148; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17136148 - 4 Jul 2025
Viewed by 210
Abstract
In the era of new urbanization and shared prosperity, addressing the entrenched contradiction between unequal urban–rural public services and consumption disparities is central to achieving sustainable urban–rural development. As the world’s largest developing country, China faces a pronounced urban–rural consumption gap, underscoring the [...] Read more.
In the era of new urbanization and shared prosperity, addressing the entrenched contradiction between unequal urban–rural public services and consumption disparities is central to achieving sustainable urban–rural development. As the world’s largest developing country, China faces a pronounced urban–rural consumption gap, underscoring the urgency of narrowing this divide through improved urban–rural public services. This study constructs a theoretical framework to analyze how urban–rural public service gaps influence consumption disparities, developing an evaluation index system for public service gaps across three dimensions: basic education, healthcare, and social security. Using panel data from 26 Chinese provinces (2011–2023), we employed fixed effects (FE) estimation, two-stage least squares (2SLS), and two-step system GMM models to examine the impact of public service gaps on consumption disparities and explore heterogeneous effects across inter-period dynamics and economic catching-up levels. Findings show that the coefficients of the three public service gaps (education, healthcare, social security) on the consumption gap are positive and statistically significant. This indicates that further widening of urban–rural public service gaps will exacerbate consumption disparities. The urban–rural consumption gap exhibits a reinforcing effect: gaps in the previous period strengthen current-period disparities, forming a vicious cycle that hinders sustainable development. Heterogeneity analysis across time reveals that the impacts of healthcare and social security gaps on consumption disparities tend to weaken, while the effect of compulsory education gaps increases significantly. From the perspective of economic catching-up heterogeneity, regions with higher catching-up levels exhibit a stronger impact of public service gaps on consumption disparities compared to lower catching-up regions. Full article
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27 pages, 7591 KiB  
Article
Advancing Land Use Modeling with Rice Cropping Intensity: A Geospatial Study on the Shrinking Paddy Fields in Indonesia
by Laju Gandharum, Djoko Mulyo Hartono, Heri Sadmono, Hartanto Sanjaya, Lena Sumargana, Anindita Diah Kusumawardhani, Fauziah Alhasanah, Dionysius Bryan Sencaki and Nugraheni Setyaningrum
Geographies 2025, 5(3), 31; https://doi.org/10.3390/geographies5030031 - 2 Jul 2025
Viewed by 422
Abstract
Indonesia faces significant challenges in meeting food security targets due to rapid agricultural land loss, with approximately 1.22 million hectares of rice fields converted between 1990 and 2022. Therefore, this study developed a prediction model for the loss of rice fields by 2030, [...] Read more.
Indonesia faces significant challenges in meeting food security targets due to rapid agricultural land loss, with approximately 1.22 million hectares of rice fields converted between 1990 and 2022. Therefore, this study developed a prediction model for the loss of rice fields by 2030, incorporating land productivity attributes, specifically rice cropping intensity/RCI, using geospatial technology—a novel method with a resolution of approximately 10 m for quantifying ecosystem service (ES) impacts. Land use/land cover data from Landsat images (2013, 2020, 2024) were classified using the Random Forest algorithm on Google Earth Engine. The prediction model was developed using a Multi-Layer Perceptron Neural Network and Markov Cellular Automata (MLP-NN Markov-CA) algorithms. Additionally, time series Sentinel-1A satellite imagery was processed using K-means and a hierarchical clustering analysis to map rice fields and their RCI. The validation process confirmed high model robustness, with an MLP-NN Markov-CA accuracy and Kappa coefficient of 83.90% and 0.91, respectively. The present study, which was conducted in Indramayu Regency (West Java), predicted that 1602.73 hectares of paddy fields would be lost within 2020–2030, specifically 980.54 hectares (61.18%) and 622.19 hectares (38.82%) with 2 RCI and 1 RCI, respectively. This land conversion directly threatens ES, resulting in a projected loss of 83,697.95 tons of rice production, which indicates a critical degradation of service provisioning. The findings provide actionable insights for land use planning to reduce agricultural land conversion while outlining the urgency of safeguarding ES values. The adopted method is applicable to regions with similar characteristics. Full article
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26 pages, 12167 KiB  
Article
Anomaly Detection Method for Hydropower Units Based on KSQDC-ADEAD Under Complex Operating Conditions
by Tongqiang Yi, Xiaowu Zhao, Yongjie Shi, Xiangnan Jing, Wenyang Lei, Jiang Guo, Yang Meng and Zhengyu Zhang
Sensors 2025, 25(13), 4093; https://doi.org/10.3390/s25134093 - 30 Jun 2025
Viewed by 228
Abstract
The safe and stable operation of hydropower units, as core equipment in clean energy systems, is crucial for power system security. However, anomaly detection under complex operating conditions remains a technical challenge in this field. This paper proposes a hydropower unit anomaly detection [...] Read more.
The safe and stable operation of hydropower units, as core equipment in clean energy systems, is crucial for power system security. However, anomaly detection under complex operating conditions remains a technical challenge in this field. This paper proposes a hydropower unit anomaly detection method based on K-means seeded quadratic discriminant clustering and an adaptive density-aware ensemble anomaly detection algorithm (KSQDC-ADEAD). The method first employs the KSQDC algorithm to identify different operating conditions of hydropower units. By combining K-means clustering’s initial partitioning capability with quadratic discriminant analysis’s nonlinear decision boundary construction ability, it achieves the high-precision identification of complex nonlinear condition boundaries. Then, an ADEAD algorithm is designed, which incorporates local density information and improves anomaly detection accuracy and stability through multi-model ensemble and density-adaptive strategies. Validation experiments using 14-month actual operational data from a 550 MW unit at a hydropower station in Southwest China show that the KSQDC algorithm achieves a silhouette coefficient of 0.64 in condition recognition, significantly outperforming traditional methods, and the KSQDC-ADEAD algorithm achieves comprehensive scores of 0.30, 0.34, and 0.23 for anomaly detection at three key monitoring points, effectively improving the accuracy and reliability of anomaly detection. This method provides a systematic technical solution for hydropower unit condition monitoring and predictive maintenance. Full article
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18 pages, 1264 KiB  
Article
Modeling the Profitability of Milk Production—A Simulation Approach
by Agnieszka Bezat-Jarzębowska and Włodzimierz Rembisz
Agriculture 2025, 15(13), 1409; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture15131409 - 30 Jun 2025
Viewed by 251
Abstract
Dairy farm profitability in the European Union has become increasingly volatile following market deregulation, complicating farm operations and undermining food security amid geopolitical tensions. To address the need for a streamlined analytical tool, this study develops a simulation model of milk production profitability [...] Read more.
Dairy farm profitability in the European Union has become increasingly volatile following market deregulation, complicating farm operations and undermining food security amid geopolitical tensions. To address the need for a streamlined analytical tool, this study develops a simulation model of milk production profitability tailored to small, open economies, using Poland as a case study. The model defines a profitability coefficient as the ratio of sector-level milk revenues to feed costs and decomposes it into three dynamic components: production efficiency (milk yield per feed unit), the price spread between milk and feed, and the net effect of policy interventions on revenues and costs. Exogenous variables (milk prices, feed prices, and policy support indices) are projected under baseline, optimistic, and pessimistic scenarios, while endogenous variables (profitability, herd size, and yield) evolve recursively based on estimated lags reflecting biological and economic responses. Simulation results for 2023–2027 indicate that profitability trajectories hinge primarily on price spreads, with policy measures playing a stabilizing but secondary role. Optimistic scenarios yield significant increases in profitability, whereas pessimistic assumptions lead to significant declines. These findings highlight the need to balance key market drivers—such as the relationship between milk prices and feed costs—with appropriately designed support instruments for milk producers. The model provides policymakers with a tool to adjust interventions so that support instruments are effective but do not lead to excessive reliance on public assistance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Agricultural Economics, Policies and Rural Management)
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21 pages, 2113 KiB  
Article
Research on Ecological–Environmental Geological Survey and Evaluation Methods for the Kundulun River Basin in Baotou City
by Yi Hao, Junwei Wan, Yihui Xin, Wenhui Zhou, Yongli Li, Lei Mao, Xiaomeng Li, Limei Mo and Ruijia Li
Water 2025, 17(13), 1926; https://doi.org/10.3390/w17131926 - 27 Jun 2025
Viewed by 331
Abstract
The Kundulun River Basin is the most prominent branch of the Yellow River system within the jurisdiction of Baotou City. As an important water source and ecological barrier, its ecological quality is directly related to the ecological security and sustainable development of the [...] Read more.
The Kundulun River Basin is the most prominent branch of the Yellow River system within the jurisdiction of Baotou City. As an important water source and ecological barrier, its ecological quality is directly related to the ecological security and sustainable development of the surrounding areas. This study selected the Kundulun River Basin in Baotou City as the research area. On the basis of collecting relevant information, a field investigation was conducted on the ecological and geological conditions of the atmospheric surface subsurface Earth system, using the watershed as the survey scope and water as the carrier for the transfer and conversion of materials and energy in the watershed. This study selected the main factors that affect the ecological geological quality of the watershed and established an evaluation model using the analytic hierarchy process, the coefficient of variation method, and the comprehensive analysis method. We have established an ecological geological quality evaluation index system for the Kundulun River Basin. We conducted quantitative evaluation and comprehensive analysis of regional ecological and geological environment quality. The results indicate that ecological environment indicators contribute the most to the ecological quality of the study area, while the impact of human activities on ecological quality is relatively small. From the perspective of evaluation indicators, grassland has the highest weight, followed by precipitation, groundwater depth, forest land, and cultivated land. Approximately 30.26% of the land in the research area is in a state of high or relatively high ecological and geological–environmental quality risk. It can be seen that the overall quality of the ecological geological environment is not optimistic and needs further protection. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil and Groundwater Quality and Resources Assessment, 2nd Edition)
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31 pages, 6788 KiB  
Article
A Novel Dual-Modal Deep Learning Network for Soil Salinization Mapping in the Keriya Oasis Using GF-3 and Sentinel-2 Imagery
by Ilyas Nurmemet, Yang Xiang, Aihepa Aihaiti, Yu Qin, Yilizhati Aili, Hengrui Tang and Ling Li
Agriculture 2025, 15(13), 1376; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture15131376 - 27 Jun 2025
Viewed by 372
Abstract
Soil salinization poses a significant threat to agricultural productivity, food security, and ecological sustainability in arid and semi-arid regions. Effectively and timely mapping of different degrees of salinized soils is essential for sustainable land management and ecological restoration. Although deep learning (DL) methods [...] Read more.
Soil salinization poses a significant threat to agricultural productivity, food security, and ecological sustainability in arid and semi-arid regions. Effectively and timely mapping of different degrees of salinized soils is essential for sustainable land management and ecological restoration. Although deep learning (DL) methods have been widely employed for soil salinization extraction from remote sensing (RS) data, the integration of multi-source RS data with DL methods remains challenging due to issues such as limited data availability, speckle noise, geometric distortions, and suboptimal data fusion strategies. This study focuses on the Keriya Oasis, Xinjiang, China, utilizing RS data, including Sentinel-2 multispectral and GF-3 full-polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) images, to conduct soil salinization classification. We propose a Dual-Modal deep learning network for Soil Salinization named DMSSNet, which aims to improve the mapping accuracy of salinization soils by effectively fusing spectral and polarimetric features. DMSSNet incorporates self-attention mechanisms and a Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) within a hierarchical fusion framework, enabling the model to capture both intra-modal and cross-modal dependencies and to improve spatial feature representation. Polarimetric decomposition features and spectral indices are jointly exploited to characterize diverse land surface conditions. Comprehensive field surveys and expert interpretation were employed to construct a high-quality training and validation dataset. Experimental results indicate that DMSSNet achieves an overall accuracy of 92.94%, a Kappa coefficient of 79.12%, and a macro F1-score of 86.52%, positively outperforming conventional DL models (ResUNet, SegNet, DeepLabv3+). The results confirm the superiority of attention-guided dual-branch fusion networks for distinguishing varying degrees of soil salinization across heterogeneous landscapes and highlight the value of integrating Sentinel-2 optical and GF-3 PolSAR data for complex land surface classification tasks. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Digital Agriculture)
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30 pages, 4883 KiB  
Article
Cyber-Secure IoT and Machine Learning Framework for Optimal Emergency Ambulance Allocation
by Jonghyuk Kim and Sewoong Hwang
Appl. Sci. 2025, 15(13), 7156; https://doi.org/10.3390/app15137156 - 25 Jun 2025
Viewed by 313
Abstract
Optimizing ambulance deployment is a critical task in emergency medical services (EMS), as it directly affects patient outcomes and system efficiency. This study proposes a cyber-secure, machine learning-based framework for predicting region-specific ambulance allocation and response times across South Korea. The model integrates [...] Read more.
Optimizing ambulance deployment is a critical task in emergency medical services (EMS), as it directly affects patient outcomes and system efficiency. This study proposes a cyber-secure, machine learning-based framework for predicting region-specific ambulance allocation and response times across South Korea. The model integrates heterogeneous datasets—including demographic profiles, transportation indices, medical infrastructure, and dispatch records from 229 EMS centers—and incorporates real-time IoT streams such as traffic flow and geolocation data to enhance temporal responsiveness. Supervised regression algorithms—Random Forest, XGBoost, and LightGBM—were trained on 2061 center-month observations. Among these, Random Forest achieved the best balance of accuracy and interpretability (MSE = 0.05, RMSE = 0.224). Feature importance analysis revealed that monthly patient transfers, dispatch variability, and high-acuity case frequencies were the most influential predictors, underscoring the temporal and contextual complexity of EMS demand. To support policy decisions, a Lasso-based simulation tool was developed, enabling dynamic scenario testing for optimal ambulance counts and dispatch time estimates. The model also incorporates the coefficient of variation (CV) of workload intensity as a performance metric to guide long-term capacity planning and equity assessment. All components operate within a cyber-secure architecture that ensures end-to-end encryption of sensitive EMS and IoT data, maintaining compliance with privacy regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA. By integrating predictive analytics, real-time data, and operational simulation within a secure framework, this study offers a scalable and resilient solution for data-driven EMS resource planning. Full article
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