Search Results (2,659)

Risk assessment of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) is essential for protecting human health and the environment. Traditional hazard assessments rely primarily on in vivo testing, which faces technical challenges in extrapolation validity, ethical dilemmas, and high costs. Machine learning (ML) models offer alternative approaches that are aligned with the 3R principles (Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement) for reducing animal use. ML methods help address the economic, ethical, and temporal limitations of traditional nanotoxicology while advancing mechanistic understanding. This review presents a cross-scale framework integrating nano–bio/nano–environmental interfaces, organ-specific toxicity, in vitro-to-in vivo extrapolation (IVIVE), interpretable ML, and regulatory translation. Future directions include building comprehensive databases to replace sparse literature data, developing ML models that bridge in vitro and in vivo nanotoxicity, incorporating co-exposure scenarios of nanomaterials and chemicals, and further exploring protein/lipid corona formation and structures. Full article

The succession crisis in Japan’s rural communities has made external growth strategies, particularly corporate farm mergers and acquisitions (M&A), crucial for preserving agricultural resources and maintaining rural land governance. Simultaneously, agribusinesses must pursue Creating Shared Value (CSV) for regional sustainable development. This study empirically examines the mechanisms underlying M&A execution among agricultural corporations and clarifies the structural dilemmas faced by CSV-oriented agricultural corporations in maintaining rural land governance. Using structural equation modeling and comparative analysis on a nationwide survey of 388 corporate farms, we analyzed relationships between organizational capacity, management goals, and M&A. Results show that M&A execution is positively associated with scale-based organizational capacity—a proxy for internal management systems and absorptive capabilities—rather than financial surplus. However, farms prioritizing CSV goals, such as farmland maintenance, face a critical structural dilemma. Motivated by socioemotional wealth and community ties, they informally assume local farmland without profit to prevent land abandonment and sustain the rural landscape. This non-strategic burden depletes resources and suppresses the organizational capacity required for formal M&A and post-merger integration. Furthermore, these CSV-oriented farms remain isolated from existing financial ecosystems, underutilizing banks for M&A coordination. To prevent synergy traps and foster sustainable land governance, the findings suggest that financial institutions may benefit from redefining their roles. Rather than solely providing acquisition capital, they could potentially serve as regional ecosystem coordinators by offering capacity-building support to CSV-oriented farms. Full article

The rapid expansion of interdisciplinary dual-degree programs in higher education poses unique challenges to students’ identity construction, particularly in highly disparate disciplinary combinations like foreign languages and STEM. Existing research on learner identity in interdisciplinary contexts largely relies on cross-sectional data, failing to capture the dynamic evolution of identities. Accordingly, this longitudinal study draws on a multidimensional framework that conceptualizes learner identity across cognitive, emotional, and behavioral dimensions and employs Q methodology and semi-structured interviews to trace the identity trajectories of 19 undergraduates in an “English + Engineering” dual-degree program across three critical time points throughout their four-year undergraduate studies. Findings reveal that at just six months after entering the program, students displayed either pluralistic exploration or an early engineering preference. After two years of learning, surging academic pressure and curriculum fragmentation were closely associated with a convergence toward an engineering-anchored identity, with some students caught in a dilemma between the two majors. Approaching graduation, the majority constructed a firm engineering-dominant identity and came to English as a competitive edge, while a highly vulnerable minority fell into a deep identity crisis. The study concludes with practical implications, calling for genuinely integrated interdisciplinary curricula and targeted psychological and academic support to mitigate identity conflicts and foster healthy interdisciplinary self-development. Full article

This article explores social love as a collective and transformative practice. It examines how both physical and ideological spaces serve as contexts where relationships of belonging, care, and responsibility are enacted and contested. It argues that space and place are crucial to understanding social love because they shape encounters, define boundaries of belonging, and reproduce or challenge relations of power, exclusion, and coloniality. At the same time, by examining the complexities of love in relation to nation-states and nativist movements, the article illustrates how ideologies can manipulate, for example, the concept of Ordo Amoris to justify the treatment of marginalized groups, particularly migrants. The study also considers relational perspectives that challenge conventional boundaries of belonging, extending bonds of responsibility beyond those defined by proximity, kinship, or national and human identities. Each of these discussions concludes with illustrative cases: grassroots mobilizations against anti-immigrant violence in Minneapolis (2026) and the Guaraní ñande reko (“our way of being”). The aim is to analyze how different spatial and relational configurations can challenge exclusionary understandings of community. Full article

Under geopolitical conflicts, the deployment of emergency green energy in energy-import-dependent countries is constrained by limited upfront capital and uncertainty regarding the conflict duration. This study evaluates financial leasing as a policy instrument by combining a benchmark decision model under conventional procurement with a tripartite evolutionary game involving the energy demand side, financial leasing companies, and the government. The results show that conventional procurement creates an underinvestment-idle-capacity dilemma governed by the critical conflict-persistence probability. Financial leasing alleviates financial constraints and redistributes the risks associated with demand uncertainty, producing market-driven and policy-guided stable equilibria. A global grid search shows that the policy-guided basin expands as the conflict-persistence probability increases. However, government subsidies have an inverted-U-shaped effect because their effectiveness is jointly constrained by the demand-side participation condition and the government’s net-benefit condition. The numerical example shows that combining financial leasing with government subsidies reduces the critical conflict-persistence probability for adopting financial leasing from 0.286 to 0.127, a decrease of approximately 56%, and substantially relaxes the feasible upper bound of the risk-sharing coefficient. These findings provide a theoretical basis for the use of financial leasing as a policy instrument to enhance energy security in energy-import-dependent countries and for the design of complementary incentive mechanisms. Full article

Catastrophic forgetting is a major challenge for deep learning models when they are incrementally trained on a sequence of new data. Reducing this forgetting in image and video data has been the primary research focus, but less attention has been given to textual domains, where discrete token distributions and semantic shifts occur across different topics. Furthermore, standalone strategies proposed for reducing catastrophic forgetting still have room for improvement. To this end, this paper proposes a synergy of stratified memory replay with parameter regularization for a BiLSTM-based incremental learning model to mitigate catastrophic forgetting in sequential text datasets. The stratified replay mechanism replays a small buffer of historical data samples into current training phases to preserve the old data patterns, while the parameter regularization penalizes modifications to the neural network weights crucial to the past tasks. The proposed approach is evaluated in an incremental training pipeline on distinct textual datasets, including software bug reports (Task A), a news dataset (Task B), and emails (Task C). The evaluation results demonstrate that the baseline neural network experiences catastrophic forgetting as its initial dataset (Task A) accuracy drops from $87.53\%$ to $11.75\%$. The standalone experience replay approach manages to retain Task A accuracy at $80.01\%$, down from its peak of $86.56\%$, while for Task B, it achieves $93.97\%$, down from the peak of $98.37\%$. The buffer sensitivity analysis indicates the model accuracy improves with increasing replay buffer size. The parameter regularization approach effectively reduces catastrophic forgetting, but it remains less effective for disruptive text distribution sequences, resulting in noticeable forgetting on prior tasks and reduced plasticity on later tasks. Evaluations of this approach show that Task A accuracy is reduced from $87.87\%$ to $71.09\%$ after training on Task C. The proposed hybrid approach reduces forgetting and preserves Task A and Task B accuracies at $83.73\%$ and $95.04\%$, respectively. Thus, the empirical evaluations demonstrate that the proposed approach is effective and outperforms the standalone experience replay strategy and parameter regularization, limiting the forgetting on the earliest task to just $4.65\%$ compared to $6.55\%$ forgetting of the replay-based method, while allowing enough plasticity for the final task to reach $98.92\%$ accuracy. Full article

Against the global carbon neutrality agenda, renewable energy subsidies have become a core policy tool for China’s energy transition, yet related policies have faced repeated anti-subsidy challenges in international trade for over a decade. This paper examines the compliance dilemma of China’s renewable energy subsidy policy under the WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM Agreement), drawing on three landmark trade disputes: two WTO cases (DS419, US–China Wind Power; DS437, US–China Countervailing Duties) and one European Union anti-subsidy investigation into Chinese photovoltaic products. Different from existing single-dimensional studies, this paper constructs a coupled dual-dimensional analytical framework integrating domestic institutional compliance and international rule constraints. The results show that repeated challenges stem from the interaction of two sets of factors: domestic subsidy design fails to meet SCM Agreement requirements in terms of specificity, subsidy form and legislative positioning, while existing WTO rules lack special exemptions for climate-oriented renewable energy subsidies. The study further proposes targeted two-dimensional optimization paths, including domestic subsidy system compliance reform and proactive participation in WTO subsidy rule revision, to balance China’s dual carbon goals and international trade compliance. Full article

Engineering ethics education faces the challenge of moving students from abstract principles toward context-sensitive decision-making. This exploratory mixed-methods study examined associations between participation in a board-game-based strategy and patterns consistent with situated ethical awareness in first-semester engineering courses at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Bogotá/Cali) and Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá). The 90-min intervention adapted Sheriff of Nottingham to an engineering entrepreneurship context and combined asymmetric roles, incentives, negotiation, uncertainty, consequences, and structured debriefing. Across 17 course offerings, 616 pre-intervention and 413 post-intervention questionnaires were analyzed as unmatched samples. In 2025-1, aggregate post-intervention scores were higher across all six measures (global score: 7.40 to 8.79), with the largest difference in academic integrity. In 2025-2, Rights (+6.9 percentage points) and Common Good (+6.1 pp) gained first-priority prominence, while the perceived role of ethics increased modestly. Qualitative responses after the intervention more often incorporated consequences, effects on others, professional responsibility, and individual–collective tensions. In 2025-2, 90.4% agreed or strongly agreed that the game helped them reflect differently on ethical dilemmas. These convergent patterns show early ethical sensitization and contextualization rather than stable ethical competence; the unmatched design, absence of a comparison group, and exploratory instruments preclude causal or individual-level claims. Full article

Ship detection in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery is essential for maritime surveillance and situational awareness. Despite the advances of deep learning for SAR ship detection, small-target detection is still hindered by severe feature degradation from repeated down-sampling and insufficiently discriminative representations under weak scattering and complex background clutter. To alleviate this dilemma, a Spatial Prior-guided feature enhancement and Multi-branch Complementary learning framework is proposed, termed SPMC, for small ship detection in SAR images. Specifically, a Spatial Prior-Guided Feature Enhancement (SPFE) module is designed to derive spatial attention priors for multi-scale features from ground-truth annotations, thereby emphasizing target-related responses and strengthening small-ship representations. Second, a Multi-branch Complementary Classification (MCC) module is developed, which introduces multiple auxiliary classification heads to learn complementary discriminative information from different classification perspectives. Furthermore, a dual-weighted complementary regularization strategy is proposed to encourages different classifiers to focus on hard samples, thereby improving the discriminative capability for small ships. Extensive experiments on the HRSID and LS-SSDD benchmarks validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework. For extremely small ships with very limited image coverage, SPMC improves the baseline YOLOv11 detector by 3.25%/0.99% in AP₅₀/AP_0.5:0.95 on LS-SSDD and by 1.28%/1.21% on HRSID, demonstrating its effectiveness in challenging SAR small ship detection. Full article

Background/Objectives: Perioperative chemoimmunotherapy has become an important curative-intent strategy for selected patients with resectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, most pivotal trials evaluate neoadjuvant therapy, surgery, and postoperative immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) treatment as an integrated regimen. Whether continued postoperative immunotherapy provides independent incremental benefit for all patients after effective neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy and complete resection remains unresolved. This review focuses on the adjuvant-phase dilemma and discusses how postoperative treatment may be refined according to response and residual risk. Methods: We performed a narrative review of major neoadjuvant and perioperative chemoimmunotherapy trials, indirect comparative analyses, pathological-response studies, circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA)-based molecular residual disease (MRD) evidence, immune biomarker studies, and emerging data in driver-positive and real-world populations. Particular attention was given to evidence informing postoperative continuation, de-escalation, or intensification after neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy. Results: Current phase III perioperative trials demonstrate clinically meaningful activity but do not isolate the independent contribution of the adjuvant ICI phase. Pathological response provides the most accessible postoperative risk signal: pathologic complete response identifies the deepest-response group, major pathologic response represents an intermediate state, and non-major pathologic response or persistent nodal disease suggests higher relapse risk. ctDNA-based MRD offers dynamic risk refinement and may help identify patients with residual systemic disease, although prospective validation is required before it can guide routine treatment omission or escalation. Programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1), tumor mutational burden, tertiary lymphoid structures, B-cell signatures, radiomics, and pathomics may provide complementary information but are not sufficient as standalone decision tools. Driver-positive disease requires molecularly stratified perioperative strategies rather than unselected extrapolation from epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)/anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-negative trials. Conclusions: The key question in resectable NSCLC is shifting from whether perioperative immunotherapy is active to which patients truly require postoperative immunotherapy. Future trials should prospectively test response-guided strategies integrating pathological response, ctDNA-based MRD, immune contexture, baseline risk, and treatment feasibility. Full article

In the context of global climate change, the blue economy and coastal blue carbon are pivotal to sustainable ocean governance. However, integrating economic, social, and ecological dimensions into national accounting systems remains highly fragmented, particularly in China. China’s marine strategies currently prioritise Gross Value Added and industrial expansion, inadvertently excluding the immense non-market carbon sequestration value of mangroves, seagrass beds, and salt marshes from the System of National Accounts. Following the PRISMA guidelines, this paper systematically reviews international policy frameworks, scientific literature, and accounting instruments to assess current implementation of blue economy and blue carbon accounting. To bridge the identified structural gaps, this paper proposes an innovative integrated framework for blue carbon accounting and carbon asset optimisation, aimed at quantitatively tracking and mapping a concrete pathway to standardise blue carbon as a tradable asset and integrate it into the China Certified Emission Reduction market. Ultimately, this research systematically analyses the scientific basis of blue carbon ecosystems, the capital mobilisation mechanisms of blue finance, and the disclosure dilemmas of blue accounting to provide in-depth strategic insights for multilateral institutions, academia, and policymakers. It provides a robust, evidence-based foundation to reconcile marine economic development with ecological boundaries, thereby supporting China’s carbon neutrality targets and the Global Sustainable Development Goals. Full article

The conventional workup for suspected early-stage lung cancer requires multiple visits, anesthetics, and procedures. Single anesthetic event lung cancer surgery integrates shape-sensing robotic bronchoscopy, cone-beam CT, rapid on-site cytologic evaluation (ROSE), endobronchial ultrasound staging, lesion localization, and minimally invasive resection into one operative encounter. In this narrative review, we describe the technical components of this pathway, summarize the supporting literature, and offer expert, institution-based troubleshooting guidance for common intraoperative dilemmas. Reported diagnostic yields for shape-sensing robotic bronchoscopy range from 80 to 96%, with approximately 90% concordance between ROSE and final pathology. Published single-institution series report reductions in time from detection to resection of 15–51 days, cost savings of approximately $3000–$10,000, and perioperative outcomes (length of stay 1.8–3.6 days; complication rates comparable to traditional pathways) similar to staged care. The supporting evidence is retrospective and derived from small, single-institution, high-volume referral cohorts; no prospective comparative trials or long-term survival data yet exist. Single anesthetic event lung cancer surgery is therefore best regarded as an emerging, resource-intensive care pathway for carefully selected patients at experienced centers rather than an established standard of care, pending prospective, multicenter validation. Full article

This study examines growing tensions between household energy security and climate and energy policy objectives in Poland. It aims to analyze household attitudes towards the decarbonization of heating, particularly the phase-out of solid fuels and gas, and to assess perceptions of alternative heat sources as a means of ensuring energy security. The analysis draws on a survey of representatives of 508 households in five municipalities in the Małopolska Voivodeship, characterized by diverse heating structures. The quantitative study was complemented by 18 in-depth interviews with local government representatives. The results indicate low public acceptance of heating decarbonization amid growing energy uncertainty. Respondents recognized the importance of diversifying heat sources and supported retaining a solid-fuel boiler, regardless of its class, as an emergency backup. Energy security was associated more strongly with autonomy, independence, and freedom of choice than with low-carbon technologies. Solid-fuel heating was perceived as strengthening household resilience to supply disruptions and crises. The findings highlight the need to consider household energy security, particularly energy costs and resilience, when designing energy policies and regulatory instruments such as ETS2 (EU Emissions Trading System 2), especially in municipalities with socio-economic and energy conditions similar to those of the municipalities included in the study. Full article

The public goods game (PGG) serves as a powerful framework for investigating human cooperative behavior. While prevailing theories emphasize imitation as the primary driver of strategy updating, evidence from an empirical study on voluntary spatial PGG revealed that human decision adjustments correlate more closely with historical payoffs than with imitative behavior. The objective of this study is to validate this conclusion and to quantify the optimal strategy-updating parameters through computational modeling. We develop an agent-based model on a $\mathrm{s}\mathrm{q}\mathrm{u}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{e}$ lattice with periodic boundary conditions, integrating prospect theory with a mixed-strategy evolutionary framework. The model systematically examines the effects of the proportion of self-adjustment (POS), mutation rate (MIS), and sensitivity coefficient (SEN) on the stationary distribution of cooperators, defectors, and loners. Our main findings demonstrate that individuals update strategies primarily through self-adjustment based on historical payoffs, with imitation playing merely an auxiliary role. The optimal self-adjustment proportion is approximately 0.9, and low sensitivity coefficients and mutation rates favor the emergence of cooperation. These results provide quantitative support for the memory-based self-regulation mechanism and offer managerial insights into promoting cooperation in social dilemma situations. Full article

Although robust observational data have long associated physical activity with improved colon cancer survival, the lack of randomized evidence has perpetuated a “causality gap,” confining exercise to supportive lifestyle advice and creating a clinical dilemma for surgeons. This paradigm has been fundamentally reshaped by the landmark phase III CHALLENGE trial. This review synthesizes the clinical, epidemiological, and translational evidence establishing exercise as a validated, disease-modifying intervention. In the CHALLENGE trial, a 3-year structured physical activity program significantly improved both disease-free survival (HR 0.72) and overall survival (HR 0.63) in patients with resected stage III or high-risk stage II colon cancer post-adjuvant chemotherapy, demonstrating a clinically meaningful additive benefit following completion of standard adjuvant chemotherapy. Mechanistically, exercise drives a multi-layered host–tumor reprogramming. Each acute exercise bout triggers transient surges of muscle-derived myokines (e.g., IL-6, SPARC) and immune-cell mobilization, enhancing natural killer and CD8⁺ T cell tumor infiltration. Cumulatively, these repeated acute pulses drive chronic adaptations, including downregulation of the pro-proliferative insulin/IGF-1 axis, attenuation of pro-tumor systemic inflammation, and microenvironmental remodeling at metastatic sites. To bridge the implementation gap, exercise oncology must transition from vague recommendations to structured, biomarker-driven clinical prescriptions defining type, dose, and duration. Mirroring the institutional success of Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) protocols, physical activity should be systematically embedded into multidisciplinary, post-adjuvant oncologic care pathways. As the primary coordinators of colorectal cancer care, gastrointestinal surgeons must lead the transformation of exercise from optional supportive care into a validated, disease-modifying standard of care. Full article