Search Results (16,971)

This paper examines how biophilic design intersects with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) amid disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, considering human–nature interactions as an individual-scale link between well-being and sustainability. Biophilic design—the integration of natural elements into the built environment—reflects well-being through human–nature interactions and connects social–ecological system dynamics and sustainability interdependencies. Drawing on evidence that pandemic-induced psychological stressors transformed people–environment relations, this study developed a conceptual framework linking selected SDG targets to the 14 biophilic design patterns and examined these relationships using data from a Europe-wide survey conducted in early 2023. It complements research on SDG interdependencies, which is mainly conducted at the system or policy level, by introducing individual experiences. NMI analysis identified a central cluster of strong statistical interdependencies among SDGs related to energy efficiency (SDG 7), infrastructure (SDG 9), and resource use (SDG 12), while SDGs associated with cities (SDG 11) and terrestrial ecosystems (SDG 15) showed weaker and more diffuse interdependencies. The observed interdependencies were strongest for SDGs represented by survey variables that reflect direct, everyday experiences of the built environment, such as indoor environmental quality, access to natural light, ventilation, contact with vegetation, and the use of natural materials, whereas SDGs represented by indirect or broader ecological dimensions exhibited weaker statistical associations. Not all conceptually linked SDGs were reflected equally in individual experiences; only a subset of potential interdependencies showed strong statistical—association. This study demonstrates that the pattern of SDG interdependencies depends on the analytical scale at which sustainability is examined. The study reinforces the value of the SDG framework as an analytical structure for sustainability science, enabling interdisciplinary investigations of complex interactions among environmental, social, and built-environment dimensions beyond policy implementation assessment. Full article

Elastic scattering angular distributions of ¹⁷Ne + ²⁸Si at $E_{\mathrm{lab}}=22.4$ MeV/u and ¹⁵O + ²⁸Si at $E_{\mathrm{lab}}=18.2$ MeV/u, well above the Coulomb barrier ($E_{\mathrm{cm}}/V_{\mathrm{B}}=9.7$ and $8.2$, respectively), have been measured at the HIRFL–RIBLL facility in Lanzhou. Time of flight–$\Delta E$ (TOF–$\Delta E$) beam identification, PPAC-based trajectory tracking, and a target–detector integrated DSSD telescope were employed for event-by-event reconstruction of scattering angles and particle identification. Detection efficiencies and solid angles were evaluated and corrected by means of Geant4 simulations. Theoretically, the real parts of the optical potentials were calculated within a double-folding model using the density-dependent BDM3Y1–Paris effective interaction, while the imaginary parts were taken as Woods–Saxon forms and adjusted by ${\chi }^2$ fits to the data using the SFRESCO code. ¹⁷Ne has a larger matter distribution than ¹⁵O. However, once mass scaling is removed, the real potential remains essentially unchanged, indicating the structural effects are not encoded in the real part. At the same time, a substantially deeper imaginary potential is required for the ¹⁷Ne + ²⁸Si system, pointing to stronger absorption and coupling effects. A further analysis in terms of the reduced distance of closest approach shows that both the strong-absorption distance $d_{\mathrm{S}}$ and the effective coupling range $\Delta d$ are larger for ¹⁷Ne than for ¹⁵O, whereas the Coulomb barrier height $V_{\mathrm{B}}$ follows the known systematics and is insensitive to structural differences. These findings provide reaction-based evidence that the more diffuse and weakly bound structure of ¹⁷Ne has a pronounced impact on the scattering dynamics on a light- to medium-mass target. Full article

Pre-treatment before drying is a crucial phase in food processing. This review highlights key traditional and innovative pre-treatment methods, focusing on their mechanisms of action at the cellular and tissue levels. This discourse examines innovative technologies with significant promise across various applications, as well as widely recognised methodologies. These include cold plasma, ultrasonication, pulsed electric fields, high-pressure processing, UV-C light, pulsed light, and coating techniques. It addresses biological components that act as barriers to mass transfer, thereby significantly influencing the efficiency of moisture evaporation. Understanding these interactions is crucial for optimising drying processes and enhancing the quality of dried food. Key pre-treatment parameters that affect outcomes are analysed and must be tailored to the specific characteristics of biological materials, which often require individualised adjustments. Each method is evaluated against goals like accelerated drying, microbiological purity, enzyme inactivation, and preservation of active components, emphasising the need for a targeted optimisation approach. The classification of biological materials into distinct categories has been proposed based on their structural and integumentary characteristics. The research outlines effective methodologies for each material type and pre-treatment purpose. This analysis also incorporates an economic perspective, considering the initial investment and operational costs of implementing the proposed methods. Full article

Recommender systems increasingly incorporate graph embeddings and graph neural networks to capture high-order relationships between users and items. However, the additional complexity of these approaches does not necessarily guarantee better recommendation quality than strong classical and latent-factor baselines. This study presents a reproducible comparison of six recommendation models representing four methodological families: Logistic Regression and Random Forest; Matrix Factorization with Bayesian Personalized Ranking; DeepWalk and node2vec; and LightGCN. The experiments were conducted on the MovieLens 1M dataset using a per-user temporal split. For each user, the most recent positive interaction was assigned to testing, the preceding interaction to validation, and all earlier positive interactions to training. The primary evaluation used identical candidate sets containing one held-out positive movie and 99 sampled unobserved movies. Performance was measured using Recall, Precision, Hit Rate, and NDCG at multiple cutoffs, complemented by bootstrap confidence intervals, paired statistical tests, computational-efficiency measurements, and analyses by user activity and movie popularity. Matrix Factorization achieved the best overall performance, reaching a Recall@10 of 0.7458 and an NDCG@10 of 0.4558, representing an approximately 56% improvement in NDCG@10 over Random Forest, the strongest classical baseline. Validation-based tuning improved LightGCN to an NDCG@10 of 0.2875; it significantly outperformed Logistic Regression but remained statistically indistinguishable from Random Forest after Holm correction. Tuned node2vec also significantly outperformed DeepWalk, reaching an NDCG@10 of 0.1593, although both random-walk embedding methods’ results remained substantially below than the strongest baselines. Popularity-based analysis further revealed that classical models and LightGCN achieved substantially higher ranking effectiveness for popular movies, whereas Matrix Factorization maintained comparatively stronger performance for less-popular items. These findings show that under the evaluated setting, greater model complexity did not consistently translate into higher recommendation effectiveness, and they thus highlight the importance of strong baselines, model tuning, standardized evaluation, and reproducible experimental protocols. Full article

Multi-tier hydroponic systems improve land use efficiency in protected strawberry production; however, shading in the lower cultivation tier can substantially limit plant growth, fruit yield, and fruit quality. This study evaluated whether supplemental LED lighting with different spectral compositions could compensate for lower-tier light deficiency in the strawberry ‘Seolhyang’. Plants were grown under an upper-tier control (UT-C), a lower-tier control (LT-C), and four lower-tier supplemental lighting treatments: blue (LT-B), red (LT-R), red + white (LT-RW), and red + white + far-red (LT-RWF). The lower tier received 6–8 mol·m⁻²·d⁻¹ less daily light integral (DLI) than the upper tier, whereas supplemental lighting increased DLI by approximately 6.5 mol·m⁻²·d⁻¹. Among the tested spectra, LT-RW consistently produced the greatest improvements in vegetative growth, reproductive performance, fruit quality, and total yield. LT-RW increased total yield from 102.4 g·plant⁻¹ in LT-C to 359.1 g·plant⁻¹, corresponding to 65.6% of the UT-C yield, and achieved an estimated gross margin equivalent to 48.0% of the UT-C level, compared with 18.5% for LT-C. LT-RW also maintained a higher soluble solids content, SSC/TA ratio, fruit weight, and firmness than the other lower-tier treatments. LT-B showed the highest total sugar concentration on a dry-weight basis and the highest ellagic acid content, but these biochemical responses were not accompanied by comparable improvements in overall productivity or fresh fruit quality. LT-RWF showed intermediate performance, whereas LT-R provided only partial improvement. Principal component analysis further suggested that LT-RW produced the overall plant response most similar to that of UT-C. These findings demonstrate that red + white supplemental lighting is an effective strategy for improving lower-tier productivity, fruit quality, and estimated economic performance in multi-tier hydroponic strawberry production. Full article

Polymer donors occupy a vital position within the active layer of organic solar cells (OSCs), and their rational molecular design and structural modulation are indispensable for the advancement of OSCs. Designing electron-withdrawing units with fused-ring skeletons is an effective strategy for constructing promising polymer donors. Herein, we report a wide-bandgap donor–acceptor (D-A)-type polymer donor, PBDQB-TF, constructed using a seven-membered fused-ring bis[1,2,5]thiadiazolo[3,4-a:3′,4′-c]dithieno[3,2-h:2′,3′-j]phenazine as the electron-withdrawing moiety. This fused aromatic skeleton exhibits strong electron-deficient character and a large conjugated plane. Benefiting from the structural merits, PBDQB-TF features a deep highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) energy level, broad visible-light absorption, and tunable aggregation behavior, enabling excellent spectral complementarity and energy-level alignment with classic non-fullerene acceptors BTP-eC9 and L8-BO. Photovoltaic devices fabricated from PBDQB-TF blended with either acceptor achieve promising power conversion efficiency near 10%. The PBDQB-TF:BTP-eC9 device delivers a favorable short-circuit current density of 20.03 mA cm⁻², while the PBDQB-TF:L8-BO system affords a higher open-circuit voltage of 0.964 V and a fill factor of 52.15%. Overall, this work validates the great potential of this new seven-membered, fused-ring electron-withdrawing unit and offers a reliable design principle for the development of next-generation potential polymer donor materials. Full article

Microalgae biomanufacturing is a promising technology that converts carbon dioxide into valuable products. However, it faces limitations in scaling, online monitoring, and controlling biological variables. In photobioreactors, light intensity influences growth and operational efficiency. This study presents Alg-flex, a low-cost, open-source monitoring and control platform based on a Raspberry Pi 4. Alg-flex integrates sensors for light intensity regulation and real-time monitoring of pH, temperature, and dissolved oxygen, enabling data visualization and logging, while providing full portability without hardware modifications. These features offer broader applicability than conventional single-variable loggers. The hardware was obtained for under $1834 USD, approximately 4% of the average cost of similar commercial units. Its performance was evaluated during the cultivation of Haematococcus lacustris in a bubble column photobioreactor. The pH and temperature sensors were validated against certified benchtop probes over the operating range used in this study, yielding median errors below 1.5%. Under the tested conditions, bioreactor cultures showed approximately two-fold higher final optical density that was significantly different than flask cultures (p = 0.0333). These results confirm that growth dynamics in small-volume microalgal cultures may differ substantially from controlled photobioreactor systems. The affordability, reliability, and multi-reactor compatibility of Alg-flex support broader biomanufacturing applications beyond microalgae cultivation. Full article

Shortwave infrared(SWIR) imaging technology, with its excellent penetration and anti-interference capabilities, is widely applied in military, medical, and industrial fields. However, traditional detectors (e.g., InGaAs) are expensive, have complex readout circuits, and exhibit insufficient low-light performance, limiting their large-scale promotion. This paper proposes and implements a single-pixel SWIR imaging system based on PbS quantum dot (QD) detectors. A single-pixel imaging system is constructed using PbS QD detectors with a formal device structure (ITO/ZnO/PbS/PbS-EDT/Au); through simulation studies, the effect of the PbS absorption layer thickness on device performance is investigated, and it is determined that a thickness of 450 nm yields optimal device performance. Based on the simulation results, a P-I-N structure PbS photovoltaic-type detector with high external quantum efficiency (EQE) and low dark current is fabricated, achieving a EQE of 62% at the 1300 nm wavelength, a dark current density of 8.54 × 10⁻⁴ mA·cm⁻² at −0.1 V bias voltage, and a −3 dB bandwidth of 324 kHz; a low-noise signal conditioning circuit is designed to optimize the −3 dB bandwidth to 337 kHz while maintaining low noise density, enabling the linear conversion of nA~μA level weak photocurrent from the detector to 0~3 V standardized voltage signals, meeting the requirements of single-pixel imaging (SPI) systems. Hadamard orthogonal encoding technology is employed to achieve spatial light modulation and signal encoding; after the PbS QD detector collects and integrates the projection signal, the image with 128 × 128 resolution is reconstructed through the inverse Hadamard orthogonal decoding algorithm. This work provides a novel solution for QD-based SWIR imaging, overcoming the cost and manufacturing limitations of traditional array systems and laying the foundation for the spectral expansion and practical application of SPI technology. Quantitative imaging characterization and low-light imaging tests are supplemented to verify the comprehensive performance of the system. Full article

Nitrogen (N) is essential for crop growth, yet excessive fertilization causes environmental issues, highlighting the need to sustain yield and grain N concentration under reduced N input. miR396s are known to regulate plant development and stress responses. Here, we examined whether and how miR396 affects wheat yield and N status under high and low N conditions. TaMIM396 (transforming with the target mimicry construct of miR396) overexpression significantly increased plant height, spike length, grain yield, and grain N concentration under both N treatments. Physiological data showed TaMIM396 enhanced dry matter (DM) and N accumulation at anthesis and maturity, as well as improved post-anthesis remobilization of DM and N to grains. RNA-seq analysis revealed that, under low N, TaMIM396 specifically upregulated key photosynthetic antenna genes, including Lhca3 and Lhcb1/2/3/5, which are critical for light harvesting, suggesting improved photosynthetic efficiency that promotes DM accumulation under N limitation. Collectively, our results demonstrate that TaMIM396 acts as a broad-spectrum N-efficiency gene, coordinating carbon and N remobilization while boosting photosynthetic capacity, thereby supporting stable yield and grain N concentration across N supply levels. Therefore, TaMIM396 is a promising candidate for breeding N-efficient wheat cultivars compatible with sustainable high-yield agriculture. Full article

The electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) is a key approach for synthesizing green ammonia under mild conditions. However, the high bond energy of the N≡N triple bond makes N₂ difficult to activate, limiting the Faradaic efficiency. MoS₂ offers advantages such as low cost and abundant reserves as a non-precious-metal NRR electrocatalyst. Nevertheless, pure MoS₂ suffers from insufficient conductivity and a limited number of active sites, resulting in suboptimal catalytic performance. Herein, we develop a solvent-regulated one-step hydrothermal strategy using ethylene glycol as the sole reaction medium to fabricate an oxygen-substituted amorphous MoS₂ (O-MoS₂) electrocatalyst. XRD, SEM, and HRTEM characterization revealed that, as the ethylene glycol ratio increased, the product gradually transformed from a layered crystalline structure to a completely amorphous structure. XPS confirmed that oxygen atoms were uniformly incorporated into the MoS₂ lattice via substitution doping. Electrochemical testing showed that O-MoS₂ achieved an ammonia yield of 97.16 μg h⁻¹ mg⁻¹ and a Faradaic efficiency of 46.44% in a 0.1 M Na₂SO₄ electrolyte at −0.70 V vs. RHE, significantly outperforming undoped MoS₂ and semi-doped S-MoS₂. DFT calculations indicate that O doping reduces the N₂ adsorption energy, thereby synergistically promoting N₂ adsorption and activation. This dual-modification strategy provides a facile and universal guidance for electronic structure regulation of MoS₂-based catalysts and sheds new light on the design of high-efficiency ambient nitrogen fixation electrocatalysts toward practical green ammonia synthesis. Full article

The efficient utilization of light energy is a powerful guarantee to improve the production efficiency of agricultural and forestry facilities. This study investigated the effects of early-morning supplemental lighting on the yield and fruit quality of greenhouse-grown blueberry and examined the physiological and transcriptional responses associated with anthocyanin accumulation. The findings indicate that supplemental lighting significantly promoted fruit development, accelerated maturation, and increased fruit size, weight, sugar, vitamin C content and the antioxidant capacity of the fruits, especially the anthocyanin content. Transcriptomic analysis revealed that, during fruit ripening, the differentially up-regulated genes activated by supplemental lighting primarily involved transmembrane transport functions, membrane components, and redox enzyme activity. Conversely, the down-regulated genes were mainly involved in organic acid metabolism, photosynthesis and photosystem functions. Pathways associated with the up-regulated genes were largely connected to anthocyanin biosynthesis and galactose metabolism. Furthermore, the anthocyanin biosynthesis showed affiliations with several distinct genes (such as 4CL and UFGT) that were differentially up-regulated, along with the MYB transcription factor. Notably, in blueberries exposed to supplemental lighting, VcMYBPA1 showed a strong positive correlation with UFGT. Further investigations demonstrated that VcMYBPA1 was mainly localized in the nucleus, and its overexpression significantly increased the expression levels of AtDFR, AtANS, and AtUFGT in Arabidopsis. This study highlights the crucial role of supplemental lighting in enhancing blueberry yield and quality and provides an effective way to further improve the utilization of light-assisted agricultural technologies. Full article

Low light is a major environmental constraint that limits crop productivity by restricting photosynthetic carbon assimilation and disrupting photosynthetic function. Nitric oxide (NO) is an important signaling molecule involved in plant stress responses; however, its role in regulating photosystem stability under low-light conditions remains unclear. In this study, tomato seedlings were treated with the NO donor sodium nitroprusside (SNP) and the NO scavenger 2-phenyl-4,4,5,5-tetramethylimidazoline-1-oxyl-3-oxide (PTIO) to investigate the effects of NO-related treatments on growth, photosynthetic performance, photosystem function, electron transport, ROS accumulation, and antioxidant defense under low-light conditions. Low light markedly suppressed growth and impaired the photochemical activities of both photosystem II (PSII) and photosystem I (PSI), as indicated by decreases in the maximum quantum efficiency of PSII (Fv/Fm), the maximal P700 oxidation capacity (Pm), and electron transport rates, together with enhanced reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation. Exogenous NO application significantly improved photosystem performance under low-light conditions. NO enhanced PSII and PSI photochemical performance, improved excitation energy distribution, and restored photosynthetic electron transport, while strengthening antioxidant enzyme activities, thereby reducing excitation pressure and oxidative damage. In contrast, PTIO treatment aggravated photosystem impairment under low light. These findings indicate that NO contributes to maintaining photosystem function and photosynthetic electron transport under low-light conditions, highlighting its potential role in improving low-light tolerance in tomato. Full article

Digital light processing (DLP)-based additive manufacturing of ceramics requires photocurable slurries with high solid loading, low viscosity, and excellent photocuring behavior. In this study, the effects of monomer composition and optimized bimodal alumina powder formulations on the rheological behavior, photocuring characteristics, printability, and sintering behavior of high-solid-loading alumina slurries were investigated. Five commercial photocurable monomers with different functionalities were evaluated to optimize the resin formulation. Among them, a binary monomer system consisting of 2-hydroxyethyl acrylate (2-HEA) and 1,6-hexanediol diacrylate (1,6-HDDA) at a weight ratio of 6:4 exhibited a favorable combination of low viscosity and photopolymerization behavior under the investigated conditions. Using this optimized resin, 50 vol.% alumina slurries containing two optimized bimodal powder formulations (2 μm/100 nm and 4 μm/400 nm) were prepared. The 4 μm/400 nm formulation showed higher double-bond conversion during UV curing, whereas the finer 2 μm/100 nm formulation produced higher relative density after sintering because of its superior packing efficiency. The optimized binary monomer system also suppressed lateral over-curing, resulting in improved dimensional accuracy compared with the single-monomer resin. Among all formulations, the slurry containing the 2 μm/100 nm bimodal powder and the optimized binary monomer system exhibited the best overall performance, including stable printing, minimal delamination, the highest relative density, and uniform sintering shrinkage. These findings provide practical design guidelines for the formulation and processing of high-solid-loading photocurable alumina slurries for DLP additive manufacturing. Full article

Augmented reality (AR) enhances the real world scene by overlaying virtual information onto it. Vision-based 3D tracking and registration is the key technology for ensuring the fusion of virtual and real content in monocular AR systems. Existing mainstream visual tracking and registration methods are susceptible to illumination variations, motion blur, target occlusion, and dynamic background interference in complex scenarios. They also suffer from low computational efficiency, cumulative pose errors, and insufficient stability, making them difficult to deploy on low power edge devices such as embedded systems and mobile terminals. To address these issues, this paper proposes a lightweight monocular AR 3D tracking and registration method that integrates ORB-FREAK features, mismatching outlier filtering, background weighted mean shift, and template-based relocalization. The method does not rely on depth sensors or neural network inference, enabling efficient and accurate lightweight pose estimation. Specifically, we first combine the ORB (Oriented FAST and Rotated BRIEF) descriptor with the FREAK (Fast Retina Keypoint) algorithm for feature detection and initial matching. Hamming distance is used for coarse filtering of mismatched point pairs, and an ascending sort combined with an iterative sequential sampling strategy is applied to solve the optimal homography matrix, significantly improving the accuracy and efficiency of matrix estimation. Then, distance constraints among feature points are imposed on the target registration region to optimize the selection, and camera pose is computed based on the matching between 2D feature points and their corresponding 3D spatial coordinates, eliminating the error accumulation problem of conventional algorithms. Real-time feature matching is further used to correct the optical flow tracking sequence and camera pose, ensuring the continuity of the AR tracking process. Finally, a background weighted mean shift algorithm is introduced to narrow the feature detection range and suppress background interference, complemented by a template-matching relocalization module and a dynamic model update strategy, which effectively enhance the robustness of continuous tracking and registration under complex conditions. Experimental results demonstrate that, in extreme scenarios such as low light conditions, high speed motion, and occlusion, the proposed method achieves AR 3D tracking and registration success rates of 86.7%, 82.3%, and 78.5%, respectively. It exhibits superior performance in pose estimation accuracy and anti-interference capability in complex environments, with significantly reduced computational overhead. Moreover, it can achieve robust and continuous AR 3D tracking and registration on low power edge devices, effectively adapting to demanding AR application scenarios and providing reliable technical support for lightweight AR applications. Full article

The traditional spring wheat–sunflower relay intercropping system in the Hetao Irrigation District of Inner Mongolia is constrained by restrictions on sowing time, relatively low resource use efficiency, and suboptimal strip configurations. Based on the winter-seeding technique for spring wheat, this study established an annual double-cropping system of winter-seeded spring wheat relay intercropped with sunflower. The objectives were to evaluate crop photosynthetic performance, grain yield, resource use efficiency, and economic benefits under different strip configurations and to identify a suitable strip arrangement. A two-year fixed-site field experiment was conducted from 2023 to 2025. Four winter-seeded spring wheat/sunflower relay-intercropping treatments (W9S2, W9S4, W18S2, and W18S4) were compared with sole-cropped winter-seeded spring wheat and sole-cropped sunflower. Relay intercropping increased leaf area index, SPAD values, and the net photosynthetic rate of both crops at key growth stages and also improved grain yield and resource use efficiency. Among the strip configurations, W18S2 showed the best overall performance. Its two-year average grain yields of wheat and sunflower were 13.2% and 32.2% higher, respectively, than those of the corresponding sole-cropping treatments. The land equivalent ratio and nitrogen uptake equivalent ratio of all relay-intercropping treatments were greater than 1, with the highest values observed under W18S2. In addition, W18S2 had higher light use efficiency, water use efficiency, and nitrogen partial factor productivity than the sole-cropping treatments and the other relay-intercropping configurations. The two-year average net profit of W18S2 was 46.8% and 8.0% higher than that of sole-cropped wheat and sole-cropped sunflower, respectively. Overall, the superior performance of W18S2 was associated with a more favorable canopy structure and photosynthetic performance, greater dry matter accumulation, and coordinated improvements in grain yield, resource use efficiency, and economic benefits. These findings provide a reference for the high-yield and resource-efficient cultivation of winter-seeded spring wheat relay intercropped with sunflower in the Hetao Irrigation District. Full article