Search Results (23,250)

Polymeric biomaterials do not degrade in vivo through isolated chemical or mechanical events. Hydrolysis, oxidation, enzymatic cleavage, fatigue, wear, protein adsorption, and lipid uptake often interact across the material surface, bulk, and surrounding biological environment, producing time-dependent changes in both structure and function. Here, we propose a conceptual framework for organizing polymer degradation under biomedical conditions as a directional network of coupled mechanisms, emphasizing how established degradation pathways can influence one another and collectively contribute to time-dependent functional loss. The framework distinguishes degradation reactions from interfacial modulators and links molecular damage to functionality retention, defined according to application-specific endpoints such as mechanical strength, mass retention, dimensional stability, or interfacial performance. We introduce a qualitative interaction matrix to describe how individual mechanisms can amplify or modulate downstream pathways, and we use this matrix to identify recurrent degradation archetypes across major biomedical polymer classes, including polyesters, polyolefins, polyamides, polyurethanes, silicones, polyacrylates, polyvinyl polymers, polyimides, and natural polymers. This perspective emphasizes that material optimization strategies rarely eliminate degradation; instead, they shift the hierarchy of active pathways. By reframing biocompatibility as a dynamic, functionality-dependent property, the proposed framework provides a structured basis for comparing polymeric biomaterials, designing more realistic in vitro tests, and developing future data-driven models of long-term implant performance. Full article

This study investigates the influence of wool yarn variants and relaxation state on the bending and drape behavior of double-jersey Milano rib knitted fabrics. The fabrics were produced from commercially available wool yarns (100% conventional wool, 22 × 2 tex; 100% organic wool, 20 × 2 tex). The use of these yarns enabled a comparative evaluation of how commercially available wool yarn variants influence the structural response, dimensional changes after washing, bending, and drape properties of Milano rib knitted fabrics. The analysis was conducted on fabrics subjected to dry and wash relaxation, with particular emphasis on the drape coefficient, drape profile parameters, bending stiffness, and bending modulus in both the wale and course directions. The results showed that organic wool fabric had a lower drape coefficient than conventional wool fabric, indicating improved drapeability, a softer handle, and increased flexibility. Wash relaxation further enhanced the drapeability of both fabrics, with a slightly greater effect observed in the organic wool fabric. The bending analysis confirmed the anisotropic behavior of Milano rib knitted fabrics, with higher bending stiffness and bending modulus noted in the wale direction relative to the course direction. Organic wool fabric generally exhibited lower bending stiffness, particularly in the course direction and following wash relaxation, suggesting a more flexible structural response. Overall, the findings indicate that the investigated commercial organic wool yarn provided favorable bending and drape behavior in Milano rib knitted fabrics and may be considered for knitted apparel applications where comfort, softness, and aesthetic appeal are important. Full article

Background: Telomere length and telomerase activity are important determinants of haematopoietic cell proliferative capacity and may influence outcomes after allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT). Genetic variation within the telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) gene may further contribute to transplantation success and post-transplant complications. Methods: Telomere length was assessed in 98 paediatric allo-HSCT recipients and their donors using quantitative real-time PCR before allo-HSCT and at one and two years post-transplantation. Selected four TERT polymorphisms (rs2736100, rs2853669, rs2735940, and rs10069690) were genotyped in donors and recipients before allo-HSCT. Associations between telomere length, genetic variants, and clinical outcomes were analysed. Results: Telomere length did not differ between recipients and donors before transplantation; however, donors younger than 18 years exhibited significantly longer telomeres. Telomere length increased at one and two years after allo-HSCT compared with pre-transplant values, with the most pronounced changes observed in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. No direct associations were found between TERT polymorphisms and telomere length. Nevertheless, the recipient rs2735940 T allele was associated with improved survival, the donor rs2736100 G allele with the achievement of complete chimerism, and the recipient rs2853669 C allele with an increased risk of acute graft-versus-host disease (aGvHD). Haplotype analysis identified associations between TERT variants and cytomegalovirus reactivation as well as aGvHD. Conclusions: Paediatric allo-HSCT is associated with dynamic post-transplant changes in telomere length. Although TERT polymorphisms did not directly affect telomere length, several variants were linked with clinically relevant transplantation outcomes, highlighting the potential role of telomere biology in haematopoietic reconstitution and transplant-related complications. Full article

Background/Objectives: Self-awareness constitutes a key metacognitive construct supporting self-regulation and adaptive functioning in aging. This systematic review examined how self-awareness fluctuates across the Alzheimer’s disease (AD) continuum and explored its associations with cognitive performance and neuroimaging markers. Methods: A systematic search was conducted in databases including PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct and Web of Science covering the period from 2016 to 2026, and the review was registered on the Open Science Framework (OSF). The selection process followed PRISMA guidelines, and a total of 334 studies were screened for eligibility while 42 met the inclusion criteria. Studies were eligible if they examined self-awareness in relation to cognitive and/or neuroimaging parameters, with individuals in the preclinical and clinical spectrum of AD as the reference population. Results: The included studies highlighted self-awareness as a dynamic construct closely linked to cognitive performance and neural integrity, with measurable deviations emerging along the continuum from subjective cognitive decline to dementia. Accordingly, the findings suggest that alterations in self-awareness may reflect the stage-dependent cognitive and neurobiological changes that characterize the progression of AD. Conclusions: Converging evidence suggests that assessing fluctuations of self-awareness, ranging from heightened awareness to reduced awareness, may contribute to the early identification of individuals at risk of progression across the AD continuum. However, the substantial methodological heterogeneity across studies precludes definitive conclusions regarding its clinical utility. Future longitudinal studies employing standardized assessment protocols are needed to determine whether these changes can reliably predict disease progression. Full article

Background/Objectives: The optimal management of periodontal treatment in patients receiving direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) remains poorly established, and bleeding concerns may lead clinicians to delay or limit treatment. We evaluated the clinical efficacy and safety of nonsurgical periodontal treatment in patients receiving DOAC therapy. Methods: This retrospective study included 67 patients receiving continuous DOAC therapy (edoxaban, apixaban, dabigatran, or rivaroxaban) who underwent nonsurgical periodontal treatment without drug discontinuation. Pocket probing depth, bleeding on probing, the periodontal inflamed surface area (PISA), the periodontal epithelial surface area (PESA), and serum inflammatory cytokine levels were evaluated. A ligature-induced-periodontitis mouse model was also used to assess the effect of apixaban on alveolar bone loss. Results: Nonsurgical periodontal treatment significantly reduced the PISA (42.9%) and PESA (10.8%) in the overall DOAC cohort, with no postoperative bleeding complications. Significant reductions in periodontal parameters were seen in the edoxaban (PISA: 44.2%, PESA: 10.9% reduction), apixaban (PISA: 45.6%, PESA: 11.7% reduction), and dabigatran (PISA: 61.3%, PESA: 16.1% reduction) groups, with no significant changes in the rivaroxaban group. Baseline PISA was positively correlated with baseline serum levels of interleukin-4 (r = 0.33), interleukin-1 beta (r = 0.29), interleukin-6 (r = 0.25), and interleukin-10 (r = 0.30). In the mouse model, apixaban administration did not aggravate ligature-induced alveolar bone loss. Conclusions: Basic periodontal treatment appears to be safe and effective for patients prescribed DOACs and may reduce local periodontal inflammation, resulting in systemic inflammatory burden. These findings support proactive periodontal intervention in patients receiving DOAC therapy, regardless of the specific anticoagulant used. Full article

Zearalenone (ZEN) and its masked form, zearalenone-14-glucoside (Z14G), are common mycotoxins found in feed that can threaten the intestinal health of piglets. To date, there has been a lack of systematic research on the toxic effects and molecular mechanisms of Z14G alone and in combination with ZEN on intestinal porcine epithelial cell-jejunal 2 (IPEC-J2) cells. This study found 80 µmol/L ZEN and 100 µmol/L Z14G were the selected experimental concentrations based on cell viability assays. Both ZEN and Z14G significantly inhibited cell viability and proliferation, induced apoptosis, and disrupted the expression of associated genes. They altered the expression of barrier-associated genes, evidenced by increase in lactate dehydrogenase release and downregulation of tight junction gene mRNA. ZEN and Z14G exposure increased oxidative stress, altered antioxidant defense, and modulated inflammatory responses, accompanied by changes in the expression of genes related to the TLR4/MyD88 and NLRP3 signaling pathways. Notably, Z14G alone exhibited a distinct transcriptional response of inflammatory-related genes, failing to upregulate IL-1β, TNF-α and STING. In conclusion, ZEN and Z14G disrupt intestinal epithelium homeostasis via interlinked oxidative, inflammatory and barrier-damaging pathways. The findings reveal the direct toxicity and unique properties of ZEN and Z14G, underscoring the need to consider masked mycotoxins in combined risk assessment. Full article

Plastic pollution continues to threaten marine ecosystems and undermine efforts toward a circular economy. This study systematically maps global research on the three core waste management strategies, i.e., reduce, recycle, and remove (3R’s), to understand their intellectual structure, evolution, and emerging directions. Using both Scopus and the Web of Science, we apply bibliometric performance analysis and keyword co-occurrence network mapping to examine trends across plastic bans and regulation, recycling technologies, and clean-up initiatives. Research on reduction has increasingly incorporated themes related to multi-level governance and circular economy frameworks, based on observed changes in keyword patterns and thematic evolution. Recycling studies show an increasing presence of themes related to advanced chemical, biological, and AI-supported systems alongside established mechanical recycling approaches. Clean-up research increasingly includes themes related to technology-driven solutions, including improved detection and remediation approaches. Despite this progress, key challenges remain such as fragmented policy coordination, technological and economic limits to scaling advanced recycling, and the high cost and complexity of large-scale clean-up. Life-cycle trade-offs and persistent microplastics further constrain impact. Overall, future research must connect prevention, material recovery, and environmental restoration within coherent governance and technological systems to reduce plastic leakage and support long-term marine sustainability. Full article

Background: Sleep loss is epidemiologically linked to atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, yet shared-transcriptome studies typically intersect differentially expressed gene lists and treat the overlap as a shared response, assuming rather than testing directional agreement. Methods: Controlled human sleep restriction (GSE39445; 438 whole-blood samples from 26 participants) and paired carotid plaque versus patient-matched intact artery (GSE43292; 32 patients) were compared across biological compartments at three resolutions: individual genes, annotated gene sets, and redundancy-collapsed programs. The resulting architecture was transferred unmodified to acute total sleep deprivation, plaque progression, and aneurysm enlargement, and was evaluated by participant-grouped cross-validation, network topology, exact-cis Mendelian randomization with colocalization, and single-cell localization. Results: Convergence was resolution dependent. The cohorts shared more differentially expressed genes than expected under independence (274 of 16,869; p = 3.54 × 10⁻⁴), yet only 48.9% changed concordantly (p = 0.66). Concordance reached 78.0% among jointly significant gene sets and 70.0% (35 of 50) after redundancy collapse (bootstrap 95% CI, 0.560–0.820), coupling neutrophil-granule and myeloid-effector enrichment with depletion of RNA-processing, chromatin, and ciliary programs. Under a contrast-independent maximum interquartile range probe-selection rule, the gene-level overlap was smaller and no longer nominally significant (190 genes; p = 0.082), whereas the prespecified 50-program architecture, rescored without re-clustering, retained the same 35 concordant programs. The architecture generalized to acute sleep deprivation (91.4%) and plaque progression (97.1%) but inverted during aneurysm enlargement (20.0%). Prespecified separability was borderline (AUC 0.558; 95% CI, 0.486–0.630; permutation p = 0.052). Of twelve topology-prioritized spliceosomal candidates, SF3A3 alone combined FDR-significant exact-cis Mendelian randomization (OR 0.851; 95% CI, 0.772–0.939) with regional colocalization (PP.H4 = 0.831). Conclusions: Sleep loss and atherosclerosis converge as coordinated transcriptional programs rather than as shared individual genes, although the magnitude and statistical enrichment of gene-level overlap were sensitive to representative probe selection; this represents cross-compartment transcriptional convergence rather than replication and does not confer individual-level separability. SF3A3 is an experimentally testable candidate, not a validated therapeutic target. Full article

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia and a major cause of death worldwide, making early detection a critical clinical priority. Because pathological changes may begin 15–20 years before symptom onset, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a promising tool for identifying and characterizing AD. In particular, multi-modal approaches that integrate cognitive, biological, and sensor-based data have attracted growing interest. This systematic review compares single- and multi-modal AI strategies for AD detection, covering machine learning and deep learning methods, feature representations, validation strategies, and classification tasks. Searches of major databases identified 568 studies published between 2016 and early 2026; 278 met the inclusion criteria according to PRISMA guidelines. Multi-modal approaches generally achieved higher performance than single-modal strategies, particularly for challenging tasks such as predicting progression between closely related disease stages, although direct comparisons under identical conditions remain scarce. Critically, only about 4% of studies evaluated their models on a genuinely independent external cohort, raising substantial concerns about model generalizability. Overall, current AI systems remain highly dependent on existing datasets and heterogeneous evaluation protocols, which limit generalizability and clinical applicability. Future research should prioritize representative multimodal datasets, rigorous external validation, and clinically interpretable AI systems. Full article

Energy-transition policy increasingly asks households and small firms to behave as informed players in liberalised electricity markets. How far they can actually play that part, however, depends on two things at once: how energy-literate they are, and how clearly their bills speak to them. Although both strands are separately well researched, they are rarely measured jointly, on the same respondents, and at the level of the bill itself—the document through which almost every consumer actually meets the market. Working from a case study of Polish electricity customers, we examine how self-assessed knowledge of billing relates to perceived bill comprehensibility and to the detailed understanding of individual invoice elements. The evidence comes from a mixed-mode CATI/CAWI survey of 602 respondents—individual consumers, prosumers and micro/small enterprises—all served by a single major supplier in the Upper Silesia region. Because the achieved sample is dominated by older respondents of one supplier, the study is framed throughout as an exploratory, regional investigation. Three findings stand out. First, self-assessed energy literacy, perceived bill comprehensibility and the detailed understanding of individual invoice elements are positively interrelated (Spearman’s ρ between 0.49 and 0.61, p < 0.001), indicating that consumer competence and information design are complementary correlates of comprehension. Second, declared knowledge and understanding are socially patterned: they run higher among respondents aged 35–54 and those in a better financial position and lower among older and financially vulnerable customers, while a third of respondents find their current bill hard to understand. Third, Ward’s cluster analysis distinguishes three internally consistent layers of billing information—detailed billing parameters, transactional and payment content, and regulatory and legal content—of which the regulatory and legal layer is read least often. Because the data come from one supplier in one region, the findings are indicative rather than nationally representative and should be generalised only with care. The paper’s contribution is to measure energy literacy, perceived transparency and detailed bill comprehension jointly on the same respondents and to document—for a Central European retail market undergoing rapid price change—that the regulatory layer of the bill is precisely the layer consumers read least. For policy, the findings support piloting simpler bill structures, communication aimed at vulnerable groups, and energy education that equips consumers to take part in the market as the transition unfolds; given the sample, these implications are advanced as directions to be tested rather than as validated prescriptions. Full article

This study addresses the thermodynamic analysis of the thermal decomposition of solid compounds under a linear temperature increase. Starting from the Gibbs free energy formulation developed for isothermal–isobaric systems, a generalised description is derived for dynamic regimes by combining thermodynamic considerations with the three-parameter equation. The proposed approach enables the identification of temperature-invariant Gibbs free energy nodes and establishes a direct relationship between Gibbs free energy, conversion degree and heating rate. The application of the equilibrium criterion yielded insights into the enthalpy and entropy changes associated with the heating rate diagrams. This investigation utilises empirical findings on the high-temperature decomposition of calcite (case 1) and the low-temperature dehydration of calcium oxalate monohydrate (case 2), applying local thermodynamic analysis to an extensive experimental dataset of the relationship. The analysis shows that the thermodynamic behaviour of these systems depends strongly on heating rate and on the selection of the thermodynamic reference state. For calcite, increasing heating rate leads to a quasi-equilibrium condition characterised by approaching zero, whereas for calcium oxalate monohydrate, the observed behaviour reflects the coupled contributions of the chemical dehydration reaction and water-vapour transport. The proposed formulation also reveals the role of the enthalpy–entropy compensation effect in the interpretation of dynamic thermodynamic functions and provides a direct link between phenomenological thermodynamics and thermo-kinetic descriptions. The novelty of the approach lies in demonstrating how fundamental thermodynamic considerations can be transitioned into thermokinetic formulations, thereby opening up new paths for extending the analysis to determine Arrhenius parameters. Full article

Traditional skywell dwellings embody climate-responsive passive design but may remain hot and humid under low-wind summer conditions, requiring passive-ventilation retrofits while preserving their spatial organization. Skywell performance and component-level solar chimneys are comparatively well studied, but their direct integration in traditional multi-room dwellings remains at an early stage. This study develops a climate-adaptive retrofit design approach that integrates a solar chimney with the existing skywell of a traditional rammed-earth dwelling in Songyang, China. Field monitoring showed that mean relative humidity exceeded 90% at all five indoor locations. An EnergyPlus Airflow Network model was calibrated against hourly temperatures from four rooms, yielding RMSE values of 0.33–0.91 °C, with 84.8% of predictions within ±1 °C. The calibrated model was used to compare the baseline and retrofit configurations during a selected 72 h hot period and across the full summer, while the 2000-configuration parametric study retained the 72 h window. During the selected period, the retrofit lowered the simulated operative temperature in all 432 paired hourly comparisons, with a mean reduction of 1.73 °C. Across the full summer, it produced lower operative temperature in 94.7% of 13,248 paired hourly comparisons, with a comparable mean reduction of 1.67 °C, and increased the percentage of hours within the adaptive comfort band from 33.9% to 52.0%. The first-floor hall showed the largest cooling benefit, whereas the second-floor rooms were more responsive to changes in vertical chimney geometry. Overall chimney height and outlet opening height jointly accounted for 85.19–95.09% of random forest feature importance. The collector glazing parameters were more influential in the skywell–chimney zone. These findings support a design hierarchy that prioritizes airflow continuity and vertical exhaust geometry before collector glazing, providing a quantitative basis for solar chimney retrofits that preserve spatial organization of traditional skywell dwellings. Full article

We develop a design-conditional limit theory for kernel estimators of conditional U-functionals based on locally stationary functional random fields observed at irregular random locations and under incomplete response observation. The covariates take values in a separable Hilbert space, the responses are allowed to take values in a general Polish space, and the target is indexed by a class of symmetric kernels of a fixed order. Functional localization is induced by single-index semi-metrics, while spatial localization is performed on the rescaled observation domain. Missing responses are incorporated through a complete-case construction under a Missing At Random condition and a uniform-positivity assumption. The resulting estimator is a ratio of spatially weighted U-statistics with random tuplewise observation indicators. The asymptotic analysis must account simultaneously for four sources of complexity: dependence within the spatial field, nonstationarity across an expanding domain, concentration in an infinite-dimensional covariate space, and the random thinning generated by missing responses. Conditioning on the sampling locations removes the randomness of the spatial design weights but does not eliminate dependence among the observations. We therefore derive a design-conditional projection decomposition adapted to the triangular-array structure of the model. The leading component is represented by a spatially dependent complete-case empirical process, whereas the higher-order canonical terms are controlled uniformly over the response kernels, functional-target points, single-index directions, and rescaled spatial locations. The proofs combine stationary tangent-field approximations for locally stationary random fields, large-block–small-block decompositions, coupling arguments under spatial absolute regularity, small-ball probability estimates, and entropy bounds for the joint indexing class. These arguments yield a uniform stochastic expansion in which the empirical fluctuation, the spatial–functional smoothing bias, and the local-stationarity approximation error appear as distinct contributions. In particular, the local-stationarity remainder has no counterpart in the strictly stationary theory and quantifies the cost of replacing the observed nonstationary field with its stationary tangent approximation. Under the MAR and positivity conditions, complete-case sampling reduces the effective local information and modifies the covariance structure, but it does not change the formal order of the uniform-convergence rate. Under strengthened moment, mixing, entropy, and negligibility conditions, we establish weak convergence of the normalized conditional U-process in the corresponding supremum-norm function space to a tight centered Gaussian process. The limiting covariance is determined by the complete-case first-order projection and consequently retains the effect of the observation propensity and the spatial dependence structure. We also introduce a complete-case leave-tuple-out spatial prediction criterion for bandwidth selection and prove oracle optimality over admissible bandwidth families. The general theory applies to conditional rank association, discrimination probabilities, set-indexed conditional distribution functionals, and related pairwise statistical-learning criteria. Simulation experiments and applications to spatial environmental and epidemiological data illustrate the finite-sample implications of the theory and the stabilizing role of single-index localization. Viewed through the lens of data-driven science, the framework addresses a fundamental asymmetry between the information carried by irregular, locally heterogeneous functional covariates and the selectively observed response tuples. By combining design conditioning, complete-case normalization, tangent-field localization, and single-index dimension reduction, the proposed approach resolves this inferential asymmetry at the level of the model by matching estimation and uncertainty quantification to the information actually available locally, without imposing artificial stationarity or complete-data symmetry. Full article

Myanmar, an agriculture-based economy, is one of the most important agricultural countries in mainland Southeast Asia. Although previous studies have documented changes in agricultural land-use and cropping patterns, trends in farmland area, cropping patterns, and food sufficiency across Myanmar’s 14 states/regions remain limited. This study addresses these gaps by using land-cover data from the global 30 m dynamic dataset and statistical data from 2000 to 2025, and household surveys from selected areas. GIS-based spatial analysis, trend analysis, and multivariate analysis of variance were applied to analyze both the direction and magnitude of farmland and cropping pattern changes over time. The results showed that Myanmar’s farmland area increased significantly (τ = +0.52, p < 0.01), expanding by 23.6% over the study period. Double cropping remained an important system, increasing by 55.9%. In the central dry zone, sufficient water availability showed the strongest effect on crop production and farmland area (F = 11.191, p < 0.001, η²p = 0.037), followed by soil fertility loss (F = 10.263, p < 0.001, η²p = 0.034). The analysis estimated that domestic consumption requirements were approximately 7.97 million tons of rice, 3.12 million tons of wheat, and 0.42 million tons of maize. These findings can support sustainable farmland use planning and inform food security policy decisions in Myanmar. Full article

Regional 10 m wind-speed products extend coverage beyond sparse station networks, but their errors vary with wind regime and location. This study evaluates a station-trained LightGBM correction of a 5 km WRF/HNR wind-speed product over Hainan Island. Raw and corrected fields were collocated with stations using a four-neighbour inverse-distance operator. A spatially separated 2022 holdout retained 67 stations after five coordinate-overlap exclusions. Across 582,610 common hourly pairs, corrected RMSE decreased from 3.198 to 1.211 m s⁻¹ and Pearson R increased from 0.368 to 0.651. The paired RMSE reduction was 1.986 m s⁻¹ [95% CI 1.839, 2.122]. Improvement was largest below 3.4 m s⁻¹ (2.203 m s⁻¹) and remained positive for 3.4–7.9 m s⁻¹ (0.566 m s⁻¹). In contrast, corrected RMSE increased by 0.990 m s⁻¹ for 8.0–10.7 m s⁻¹ and by 1.656 m s⁻¹ for ≥10.8 m s⁻¹. A time-only adjustment reduced pooled RMSE to 1.870 m s⁻¹ but also degraded the two upper strata. The 2016–2022 maps show a lower corrected product climatology, with a mean corrected-minus-raw increment of −2.273 m s⁻¹ across the Hainan buffer. Temporal partitions and AWS-selected station groups show variation across season, time of day, and setting. The correction reduces station-sampled errors for light-to-moderate wind speeds; it changes speed magnitude while retaining the raw-product wind direction. Full article