Search Results (1,288)

Pixel-level annotation of bi-temporal high-resolution imagery is costly because annotators must distinguish genuine changes from pseudo-changes caused by illumination, seasonality, shadows, and residual misregistration. From a temporal-symmetry perspective, unchanged regions approximately preserve cross-temporal semantic correspondence, whereas genuine building changes introduce localized symmetry breaking between the two acquisition times. This paper presents BSCNet, a semi-supervised framework for binary building change detection that jointly models boundary-sensitive differences and scene-dependent scale preferences. A shared-weight MixTransformer extracts multi-level bi-temporal features. The Edge-Aware Optimization Module suppresses spatially invariant channel responses, enhances residual spatial cues, and predicts a Sobel-supervised edge map. The Parallel Selective Context Module aggregates depthwise-separable branches with different receptive fields and produces an image-level scale distribution. The Multi-scale Edge-Consistent Mean Teacher framework aligns the final prediction, intermediate edge representation, and scale-selection distribution between an exponential-moving-average teacher and the student. Experiments on WHU-CD and LEVIR-CD under 5%, 10%, and 20% labeled-data settings show consistent improvements over RCL, C2F-SemiCD, and CutMix-CD. With 5% labeled data, BSCNet achieves F1/IoU scores of 88.57%/79.49% on WHU-CD and 88.88%/79.98% on LEVIR-CD. An additional UAV-CD evaluation examines transfer to 0.06 m low-altitude UAV imagery containing both building and land changes; under 5% supervision, BSCNet obtains an F1/IoU of 68.07%/51.60%. Progressive ablations confirm complementary gains from the boundary, scale, and consistency components. Full article

Rainfall-induced instability of highway slopes with a soil–rock binary structure may be strongly influenced by the hydraulic barrier effect of low-permeability shale. This study investigated the right-side slope along the D-ramp section from DK0+230 to DK0+660 at Deze Interchange on the Zhanhui Expressway, China. A two-dimensional coupled seepage–stress model was developed based on the engineering geological conditions and rainfall records to simulate the slope response under a 72 h extreme rainfall scenario with an intensity of 175.6 mm/d. Field displacement monitoring data were used to validate the modeled deformation pattern under natural conditions. Under natural conditions, the reinforced toe zone remained stable, deformation was concentrated along the interface between the block-stone layer and strongly weathered limestone in the middle and rear portions of the slope, and the factor of safety was 1.1344, indicating a basically stable state. During prolonged rainfall, infiltrating water accumulated near the interface between the strongly weathered shale and the underlying shale owing to the hydraulic barrier effect of the low-permeability shale, forming a continuous transient saturated zone. The plastic zone progressively extended from the upper shallow weak interface to the lower deep interface and eventually became fully connected, while the factor of safety decreased to 0.9886, indicating overall instability. The results reveal a coupled mechanism involving interfacial water accumulation, increased pore-water pressure, the formation of a transient saturated zone, and a shift in the controlling zone of slope deformation and failure from shallow to deeper layers. These findings provide a reference for disaster prevention and mitigation of similar soil–rock binary-structure slopes. Full article

This study investigated the thyroid effects of azole fungicide mixtures in male rats, addressing the gap in regulatory assessments that typically focus on single chemicals rather than combined exposures. Using a 28-day rat model, binary and ternary mixtures of azole fungicides were tested at high doses, with thyroid hormone levels, liver enzyme activity, and thyroid tissue changes as the key endpoints. The mixtures caused elevated TSH, reduced T4, increased UGT enzyme activity, and thyroid tissue alterations, including follicular cell hypertrophy and hyperplasia. Interestingly, the mechanism observed with single-compound exposures (hepatic metabolism driving secondary TSH elevation) appeared less prominent in the mixture groups. Whether these responses reflect additive, less-than-additive, or more-than-additive interactions could not be determined without formal dose–response modeling. As the tested dose (NOAELx10) is substantially higher than the human realistic exposure levels permitted under the current regulation, direct extrapolation of the present findings to realistic human exposure conditions is limited. However, the current regulatory evaluation with respect to the effect dose was confirmed. While existing approaches appear adequate, a deeper understanding of thyroid-specific endpoints is needed to ensure that mixture risk assessments remain robust and appropriately protective. Full article

The mental health of young people has increasingly emerged as a public health priority due to the growing prevalence of mental health problems during adolescence and early adulthood. The literature has identified community-based programs as effective strategies for promoting well-being and preventing psychological symptomatology. In this context, the present study aimed to evaluate the impact of the interventions provided by junior psychologists working in the Youth Health Offices of the Cuida-te Program of the Portuguese Institute of Sports and Youth (IPDJ) on the quality of life, well-being, and mental health of Portuguese youth through a pre- and post-intervention analysis. A total of 1164 young people, aged between 12 and 29 years old, participated across three editions of the program. Self-report instruments were used to assess the quality of life, the well-being, and the psychological symptoms (stress, depression, and anxiety) of the participants. The results revealed statistically significant improvements between pre- and post-intervention assessments, including increased quality of life and well-being, as well as reduced levels of stress, depression, and anxiety. These findings were observed among both female and male participants and across different age groups. Non-binary participants showed less pronounced results, although with no statistically significant differences identified, suggesting the need for more research with larger samples and for inclusive interventions tailored to the specific needs of sexual and gender minorities. Overall, the work carried out appears to constitute an effective and cost-effective community-based response for the prevention of mental health symptoms and the promotion of mental health in adolescents and young adults, reinforcing the importance of permanent, accessible, and inclusive public policies. Full article

Congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) is increasingly recognized as a dynamic cardiopulmonary disease in which pulmonary hypoplasia, pulmonary hypertension, and cardiac dysfunction interact to shape clinical instability, therapeutic response, and outcomes. Hemodynamic phenotyping has emerged as a strategy to move beyond binary classification of pulmonary hypertension and toward physiology-directed care. Early single-center experiences suggest potential clinical utility of echocardiography-guided, phenotype-directed management; however, external validation remains limited. Further important challenges remain, including technical and institutional barriers to timely echocardiography, limitations of static single-time-point assessments, uncertainty regarding what exactly defines each phenotype, and incomplete understanding of the impact of time and therapies on phenotype presentations. In this perspective, we summarize the evolution of heart-focused care in CDH, describe current hemodynamic phenotyping approaches, examine unresolved questions in phenotype classification and implementation, and outline future research priorities needed to advance dynamic, mechanism-based precision cardiopulmonary care for infants with CDH. Full article

Climate change poses significant challenges to agricultural production, water availability, and food and nutrition security, particularly in semi-arid regions where rural livelihoods depend heavily on rain-fed agriculture. In Eswatini, increasing temperatures, erratic rainfall, and recurrent droughts have intensified pressures on smallholder farming systems; however, limited empirical research has examined how climate variability simultaneously affects agriculture, water resources, and household food security within an integrated food–water–nutrition nexus framework. Therefore, this study assessed the impacts of climate change on agricultural production, water availability, food security, and access to nutritious food among smallholder households in the Lubombo Region of Eswatini. A concurrent triangulated mixed-methods approach was employed, combining quantitative data from 880 households with qualitative insights from open-ended responses. Descriptive statistics, Spearman’s correlation, binary logistic regression, and thematic analysis were used to analyse the data. The findings reveal that climate change significantly affects both agricultural and water systems, which in turn directly influence household food security outcomes. The majority of households reported declining crop yields (56.5%), widespread food shortages (79.5%), meal skipping (69.0%), and high levels of food-related anxiety (87.6%). Water insecurity is also prevalent, with over 83% of households experiencing water shortages and nearly all respondents indicating that climate change has affected water access. Correlation and regression analyses demonstrate that drought frequency and reduced rainfall are the strongest predictors of both water insecurity and food insecurity, highlighting the central role of climate variability. Water scarcity emerged as a critical pathway linking climate change to food insecurity, with strong associations between water shortages and reduced crop yields, food shortages, and coping strategies such as skipping meals. Qualitative findings further highlighted declining agricultural productivity, loss of traditional foods, reduced dietary diversity, and increased psychological stress associated with food insecurity. The study concludes that food insecurity in the Lubombo region is multidimensional, driven by the interconnected effects of climate variability, water scarcity, and socio-economic constraints. The findings emphasise the need for integrated, climate-resilient strategies that simultaneously address agricultural production, water resource management, and household adaptive capacity to enhance food and nutrition security. Future research should evaluate the effectiveness of nexus-based adaptation strategies and climate-smart interventions in enhancing long-term food, water, and nutrition security in vulnerable smallholder farming systems. Full article

Periodic manual oversight is difficult to scale for large portfolios of funded research projects. Progress delays, budget irregularities, and superficial reporting often go undetected until final acceptance. Many conventional detection methods also generate false positives when contextually supported schedule adjustments resemble anomalous patterns. We present the Intelligent Project Monitoring System (IPMS), which couples a feature-decoupled multi-task LSTM-Attention network with an Adaptive Isolation Forest. The LSTM-Attention component models project workflows through finite state machines and predicts milestone deviations. The Adaptive Isolation Forest then flags records after a context gate screens cases meeting the study’s legacy legitimate-deviation criteria before final alerting. A multi-head attention module tracks how execution performance evolves over the project lifecycle, and the system includes a loss-ratio signal for candidate-shift review and feedback-gated controlled recalibration; its response was evaluated only under one researcher-designed synthetic global policy-change injection. On a real-world dataset from a provincial management platform, in which approximately 7% of legacy-labeled records carried an anomalous reference label, IPMS achieved an AUC of 0.924 and a false-positive rate of 4.2% against the available legacy binary reference labels, a 76.9% relative reduction in observed FPR compared with standard Isolation Forest. Milestone deviation prediction reached an MAE of 1.85 days, 34.2% lower than standard LSTM. Execution profiling achieved an MAE of 0.082. Removing the deviation filter alone degraded F1 by 12.3%, and removing multi-scale fusion increased the miss rate for long-duration stalls by 23%. Full article

The success of HIV treatment is primarily measured through viral load suppression. However, little is known regarding the association between sexual union status and viral suppression among older adults. This study aimed to assess the association between sexual union status and HIV viral load suppression among adults aged 40 years and older living with HIV in rural Mpumalanga, South Africa. An observational analytical study design was followed, utilising data from the HIV After 40 study in Mpumalanga. The study focused on 4637 older men and women aged 40 years and above, living with HIV. Four nested unadjusted and adjusted binary logistic regression models assessed the association between sexual union status and HIV viral load suppression. All statistical analyses were done using SPSS Version 29.0; the significance level was set at p < 0.05. Viral suppression rates significantly differed by sexual union status (p = 0.003), with married/cohabiting participants showing lower suppression (40.6%) than single (45.1%) and divorced/widowed participants (45.9%). The fully adjusted logistic regression model showed a non-significant association between viral load suppression and sexual union status (p = 0.066); however, a significant association was found in the unadjusted (p = 0.020) and partially adjusted models. Having a primary education (p < 0.001), South African citizenship (p < 0.001), being aged ≥66 years (p < 0.001), and being female (p = 0.003) were independently associated with lower odds of being virally suppressed. Sexual union status was not significantly associated with viral suppression in the fully adjusted regression model. This underscores the need for gender-responsive, age-sensitive HIV treatment interventions in rural South Africa. Full article

Carbon pricing can change manufacturers’ material choices, while the costs of managing the residual waste remain geographically uneven. We formulate a manufacturer–regulator bilevel model for a household plastic-waste closed-loop supply chain with quantity-dependent recycled-bale prices, activity-specific carbon accounts, physical interregional waste routing, and a proportional regional cost-burden standard. The lower level is explicitly a single coordinating-regulator linear program rather than a game among independent regions. Its primal constraints, dual constraints, and strong-duality equality are embedded in the manufacturer problem; binary-continuous products are exactly linearized using the manufacturer’s SOS1 price-grid variables. Thus, every reported policy point is obtained from the same 12-region mixed-integer equilibrium formulation. Across 36 central policy combinations, HiGHS reports a zero mixed-integer programming gap, and the largest feasibility and optimality residual is $5.24\times {10}^{-8}$. Raising the carbon tax from 0 to 10 USD/tCO₂ increases the real recycling rate (RRR) from 15.33% to the bale-capacity limit of 29.85% and reduces physical emissions by 11.64%. Tightening the allowed regional burden deviation from 25% to 5% reduces the standard deviation of normalized residual-waste cost burden by 77.89% and interregional residual-waste transfers by 77.05%, but does not change the RRR. This zero-recycling effect overturns the earlier assumption-driven result: a pure routing-based cost-balancing rule cannot mechanically stimulate the manufacturer’s recycled-input demand. A global analysis of 300 parameter sets and five independent regional samples re-solves 1800 equilibrium models; all have a zero solver gap and pass the residual audit. Carbon-induced RRR increases have a median of 17.03 percentage points, while strict-versus-loose burden-threshold changes in RRR are zero in every set. The results distinguish carbon efficiency, regional cost incidence, and fiscal incidence and show that policy complementarity must be demonstrated through endogenous decision links rather than imposed response functions. Full article

Non-mechanical beam steering technology based on liquid crystal optical switches and liquid crystal polarization gratings holds significant application prospects in fields such as laser communication, radar detection, and optical information processing. Traditional nematic liquid crystal optical switches exhibit slow response speeds, whereas novel ferroelectric liquid crystal optical switches, despite their fast response, are hampered in engineering applications by complex fabrication processes, the large number of devices required for cascading, and substantial module thickness. To address these issues, this paper proposes and demonstrates a fast non-mechanical beam steering scheme by cascading a stressed polymer network liquid crystal (SPNLC) optical switch with a liquid crystal polarization grating. The SPNLC is fabricated by mechanically shearing a polymerized liquid crystal–polymer composite, enabling sub-millisecond response and continuous linear phase modulation without the need for an alignment layer. A 30-μm-thick SPNLC half-wave plate was prepared, which introduces a phase retardation of 3.6 μm under a driving voltage of 300 V, and the rise time and fall time are measured to be approximately 526 μs and 560 μs at a driving voltage of 20 V with a 1 kHz square wave, and 470 μs and 538 μs at 27 V under the same waveform conditions. Cascaded with a passive polarization grating, the waveplate enables fast electrical switching of the beam between the ±1st diffraction orders. Furthermore, a two-dimensional multi-angle beam deflector was constructed based on a supra-binary cascade scheme. Experimental results confirm that the system possesses sub-millisecond response, large phase retardation, continuous tunability, and an alignment-layer-free fabrication process, demonstrating its feasibility for large-range fast beam scanning. Full article

Interleukin-1 receptor-associated kinase 4 (IRAK4) is one of the IRAK family proteins and plays an important role in the regulation of innate and inflammatory responses. In particular, IRAK4 acts as a key regulator of the Toll-like receptor (TLR) and interleukin-1 receptor (IL-1R) signaling pathways and has attracted attention as a therapeutic target for immune and inflammatory diseases. In this study, an integrated computational approach combining machine learning, molecular docking, and molecular dynamics simulations was applied to identify putative IRAK4 inhibitor candidates. Bioactivity data of IRAK4 were obtained from the ChEMBL and PubChem databases and evaluated for multiple binary classification models. The optimized XGBoost model based on ECFP4 and PubChem fingerprints achieved an ROC-AUC of 0.996 and an average precision (AP) of 0.991 on the independent test set. After that, 20 candidate compounds with high predictive probability score were finally selected through subsequent screening of the DrugBank database. Among them, DB12168 (MK-0557), DB15040 (TP-271), and DB18152 (Zilurgisertib) exhibited favorable binding free energies and stable complex formation with IRAK4 through molecular dynamics simulations and MM-PBSA calculations. Overall, these results demonstrate that approaches incorporating machine learning and structure-based computational analysis can be useful for discovering and prioritizing potential IRAK4 inhibitor candidates. Full article

Fine-grained poisonous mushroom recognition in natural scenes is challenging because of complex backgrounds, subtle morphological differences, and the limited interpretability of model decisions. To address these challenges, this paper proposes Att-FiLM, an attention-enhanced multi-scale Feature-Wise Linear Modulation network for poisonous mushroom image recognition. The model adopts an asymmetric dual-backbone architecture in which a frozen ConvNeXt-Base branch provides global semantic priors, while a trainable EfficientNet-B0 branch learns local discriminative features. Rather than directly concatenating heterogeneous features, Att-FiLM generates scale and shift parameters from semantic features and performs channel-wise modulation on multi-scale EfficientNet features at Stage 2 and Stage 4. This mechanism enables global semantic information to guide local feature learning while reducing feature redundancy and semantic inconsistency. Experimental results show that Att-FiLM achieves an Accuracy of 95.58% and an F1-score of 0.9455 on the poisonous/edible binary classification task. On the 190-class species-level classification task, it achieves a Top-1 Accuracy of 93.63% and a Macro-F1 of 0.9347. Interpretability analysis further shows that decision-relevant responses are frequently associated with morphologically relevant regions, including gills, annuli, volvae, and cap textures. These results indicate that Att-FiLM provides effective recognition performance together with interpretable decision evidence for mushroom recognition in complex natural scenes. Full article

Under out-of-plane loading, composite sandwich wall panels may develop relative slip between the wythes and end slip at the intermediate-layer interface, weakening composite action and flexural stiffness. Previous studies have mainly focused on bearing capacity and connector performance, while the complete slip-development process, parameter effects, and quantitative slip-warning indicators remain insufficiently investigated. To investigate the flexural slip mechanism and design control method, three one-way composite sandwich wall panels with different wythe thicknesses, reinforcements, and stiffness ratios were tested under four-point bending. The load–deflection response, crack development, relative slip, and end slip were recorded. The measured slip values were normalized by the midspan yield deflection to obtain the absolute slip ratio, relative slip ratio, and end slip ratio. The results show that both the relative slip between the inner and outer wythes and the end slip exhibit a three-stage evolution with increasing load: almost no slip before cracking, approximately linear development after cracking, and rapid increase after yielding. The stiffness matching of the inner and outer wythes and the thickness of the intermediate layer are important factors affecting slip development. Based on the test results and comparison with existing experimental data, the yielding stage is recommended as the slip-warning control point, with warning values of 0.03 for the relative slip ratio and 0.06 for the end slip ratio. Finally, a simplified model based on partial composite action theory was established using binary linear regression and the least-squares method. The model achieved a centered $R^2$ of 0.937, while the slip influence coefficient increased from 2.4–8.8% at yielding to 30.3–66.0% at the peak stage, quantitatively supporting yielding-stage warning control. Full article

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is traditionally classified using categorical clinical patterns and binary recurrence endpoints. However, these measures do not fully reflect arrhythmia frequency, duration, temporal distribution, or progression. AF burden, defined as the proportion of monitored time spent in AF, provides a more granular measure of disease activity and therapeutic response. Recent advances in cardiac implantable electronic devices, insertable cardiac monitors, wearable technologies, and digital platforms have significantly improved burden assessment, although considerable heterogeneity remains in monitoring methods, definitions, and clinically relevant thresholds. This review examines contemporary approaches to AF burden measurement and its associations with thromboembolic risk, heart failure, hospitalization, symptoms, quality of life, disease progression, and mortality. We particularly discuss the reduction of AF burden as a potential therapeutic target following antiarrhythmic drug therapy and catheter ablation, and the limitations of conventional recurrence definitions based on episodes lasting more than 30 s. This review also focuses on the implications for rhythm-control selection, post-ablation monitoring, anticoagulation, and clinical-trial design, while proposing priorities for standardized burden-based assessment. Full article

The knee is a mechanically demanding synovial organ in which joint loading, tissue deformation, cellular mechanotransduction and matrix turnover are coupled. This narrative review critically links those scales and asks where the evidence is sufficiently mature for mechanistic or clinical inference. PubMed/MEDLINE and Europe PMC were searched from database inception to 20 July 2026 using structured terms for knee biomechanics, cartilage and osteochondral mechanobiology, finite element modelling, mechanosensitive channels, osteoarthritis, machine learning and digital twins. Landmark studies were selected for foundational models, while recent studies were prioritised for causal experiments, validation and translation. Instrumented implants show that common activities generate tibiofemoral forces of several times body weight, but tissue-level exposure also depends on muscle co-contraction, geometry and material properties. Biphasic and fibril-reinforced models explain how those loads become stress, strain, fluid pressure and osmotic signals. At the cell scale, TRPV4 and PIEZO1/2 participate in overlapping, context-dependent calcium signalling rather than a universal protective–pathological binary; most causal evidence remains preclinical. Osteoarthritis is therefore framed as a mechanically amplified feedback process involving cartilage, bone, synovium and systemic modifiers. Computational degeneration models and machine-learning surrogates are increasingly informative, although prospective validation, parameter identifiability and uncertainty propagation remain limiting. The review’s added value is an explicit transmission-and-validation framework that connects whole-joint observables to molecular responses while labelling the evidence source and translational readiness at every step. Full article