Search Results (1,974)

Changing disturbance regimes and uncertain recovery trajectories under global change have created a need for conceptual models to guide forest management within a sustainability framework. This conceptual article develops on operational framework for ecosystem memory in forest ecosystems. Conventional views of resilience may foster the misleading assumption that ecosystem development follows a fixed trajectory within the boundaries of the natural range of variation. However, climate change may transform resilience mechanisms, causing forest ecosystems to shift beyond their historical range of variation. Under such conditions, the concept of ecosystem memory offers a framework for analyzing and quantifying temporal system properties. The constraints inherited through memory patterns are themselves likely to be modified under changing environmental conditions. A valid interpretation of ecosystem memory requires a clear ontological understanding of memory components as material entities organized under temporal and spatial constraints. The human memory metaphor is an appealing entry point for understanding ecosystem memory but risks erroneously attributing semantic encoding and representational processes to ecological systems, where no such mechanisms exist. Based on a narrative synthesis of 39 publications, supplemented by an updated Web of Science search that identified 396 records, we develop an operational ecosystem-memory framework that distinguishes persistent ecological legacies from functionally active memory by linking ecological imprints, ecosystem engrams, and measurable ecosystem responses. The framework provides a basis for identifying and monitoring measurable legacy variables, including deadwood, retained trees, regeneration, soil properties, and refugial structures, in post-disturbance forest management. Full article

Background/Objectives: Executive function (EF) is a foundational cognitive process associated with academic achievement and socioemotional adjustment. While average developmental trends are well documented, less is known about heterogeneity in EF trajectories during early childhood and the contextual factors associated with different developmental pathways. This study examined longitudinal trajectories of EF between ages 3 and 6 and their associations with family, child, and caregiver well-being, as well as the home environment. Methods: Data were drawn from the Chilean longitudinal cohort First Thousand Days (Mil Primeros Días [MPD]; n = 583). EF was assessed at ages 3, 5, and 6 using the Cat-Dog task. Latent profile analysis identified EF trajectories, and multinomial logistic regression examined predictors of trajectory membership. Results: Three EF trajectories were identified: Normative (54.5%), Persistently Disadvantaged (34.6%), and Advantaged Accelerating (10.8%). Home environment quality was the most consistent predictor of trajectory membership, increasing the likelihood of following the Advantaged Accelerating (RRR = 1.59) or Normative (RRR = 1.21) trajectory relative to the Persistently Disadvantaged trajectory. Early cognitive development protected against the most disadvantaged trajectory, whereas distal sociodemographic characteristics and caregiver well-being were not significant predictors of trajectory membership. Conclusions: Individual differences in EF emerge early and show divergent growth rates through age 6, with home environment quality as the strongest predictor—highlighting the value of enriching home learning environments before school entry. Full article

A key scientific challenge in landslide-generated impulse-wave research is to determine how initial slide conditions are translated into wave responses through the intermediate water-entry process. Existing data-driven studies generally focus on direct prediction or variable-importance ranking and therefore provide limited insight into the pathways linking slide release, water entry, and wave generation. To address this issue, a three-stage process-chain framework was developed using 290 laboratory test cases, integrating initial slide conditions, water-entry dynamics, and wave responses. Cross-stage correlation analysis, standardized path modeling, mediation-effect decomposition, cascade prediction, bootstrap resampling, and diagnostic analyses were jointly applied. The results show that relative effective entry mass M is strongly correlated with relative wave amplitude A and relative wave height H, with Spearman coefficients of 0.96 and 0.91, respectively, while the corresponding coefficients for the entry Froude number $Fr$ are 0.71 and 0.80. Within the present dataset and fitted model, mediation analysis indicates that the pathways through M have the largest modeled indirect contributions: the indirect effects of initial slide mass through M are 0.652 for A and 0.600 for H, whereas the corresponding effects of the Bingham number are $-0.669$ and $-0.615$. The cascade framework further shows that the realized entry state can be systematically reconstructed from the initial conditions and used as an explicit intermediate layer for wave-response prediction. Prediction comparisons further show that the observed entry-state model is best interpreted as an explanatory or diagnostic benchmark because it uses measured entry-state variables, whereas the direct initial-condition and cascade models address prospective prediction from prescribed initial-condition information. The main advantage of the cascade framework therefore lies in its physical interpretability rather than a substantial gain in predictive accuracy. Within the present dataset and fitted model, the associations between the initial slide conditions and wave responses are expressed mainly through mass-related and inertia-related pathways involving the realized entry state. Full article

Background: The persistent challenge of not having a physician or nurse practitioner for ongoing care for millions of residents imposes a burden on the health economy in Canada and demands a shift in focus from mere system registry to the value-based concept of attachment readiness. With a hypothesis that true attachment is a function of attachment readiness, a relational process shaped by the intersection of patients’ preparation, providers’ capacity, and systemic support, this study aims to investigate the challenges of attachment-creating barriers to meaningful healthcare relationships. Methods: This sequential mixed-methods study was designed to integrate a comprehensive scoping review of academic librarian-guided databases, search engines, grey literature, and snowballing, followed by 360-degree qualitative interviews with experts, service providers, and clients. Qualitative data was analyzed by thematic coding to answer the research questions. Results: Attachment is a function of a multitude of factors from patients and physicians’ “attachment readiness” is a multilevel, process-oriented condition shaped by patient preparedness, provider capacity, and system design more than a single episodic event or individual attribute. Facilitators such as team-based care, patient navigation, culturally responsive outreach, and structured onboarding reinforce readiness as a system-enabled condition. However, persistent system-level barriers delay attachment among motivated patients (readiness decay), leading to frustration, disengagement, and reduced trust. Findings further suggest that attachment is constrained not only by physician supply but also by time-sensitive readiness conditions. Conclusions: This study suggests that attachment to primary care is one leg of a three-legged stool, upheld and sustained by the two others- equity and access. To facilitate true attachment and to move beyond fragmented care and reliance on high-cost emergency departments, Canadian healthcare policy must consider attachment readiness through standardizing onboarding (implementing uniform digital intake processes to reduce repetitive data entry and administrative friction), an equity lens for prioritizing vulnerability (refining centralized waitlist algorithms to account for clinical urgency and social determinants of health), and supporting provider capacity (providing financial and administrative incentives that recognize the labour involved in establishing new longitudinal relationships for patients with complex needs). Full article

The global active satellite population has increased from fewer than 3000 objects in 2020 to more than 14,000 by the end of 2025, while filed megaconstellation plans suggest that tens of thousands of additional satellites may be deployed over coming decades. This rapid expansion of low Earth orbit (LEO) infrastructure has raised concerns regarding novel anthropogenic inputs to the upper atmosphere, particularly black carbon from rocket launches and aluminium oxide nanoparticles generated during satellite re-entry. This review synthesises literature published between 2000 and 2026 across atmospheric chemistry, aerosol science, climate dynamics, and hydrology to evaluate the potential pathways through which these emissions may influence precipitation processes and flood risk. The evidence indicates strong support for several upstream mechanisms, including alumina-mediated ozone chemistry, anthropogenic metal accumulation in stratospheric aerosols, and the disproportionately high radiative forcing efficiency of rocket-derived black carbon. However, substantial uncertainties remain regarding the extent to which these atmospheric perturbations propagate through climate and hydrological systems. This review identifies the current state of knowledge, highlights areas of agreement, uncertainty, and contradiction within the literature, and outlines priority directions for future research, monitoring, modelling, and governance. The findings suggest that while satellite-driven changes to precipitation and flood risk remain unconfirmed, the rapid expansion of megaconstellation activity warrants further investigation within integrated Earth-system frameworks. Full article

Stress corrosion cracking (SCC) of prestressing steel threatens prestressed concrete structures with sudden, brittle failure and minimal visible warning. While mechanical stress, localized corrosion, and hydrogen uptake are recognized drivers, the mechanisms connecting sulfide exposure in cementitious materials to hydrogen uptake and crack initiation at the steel–concrete interface remain poorly understood. This review synthesizes the coupled electrochemical, mechanical, metallurgical, and environmental processes governing SCC, with particular emphasis on the interactions of sulfide species with chloride ingress, carbonation, pitting, and hydrogen-assisted cracking under sustained tensile stress. Evidence indicates that sulfides weaken passive-film protectiveness and facilitate hydrogen entry, while localized corrosion and acidification create favorable conditions for crack initiation and propagation. Because SCC susceptibility emerges from the combined effects of environmental exposure, steel microstructure, and mechanical loading, isolated environmental parameters cannot adequately predict risk. Accelerated laboratory tests offer comparative insight but have limited representativeness of the complex conditions of prestressed concrete. A critical gap persists: no quantitative relationship has yet been established between cement sulfide content, sulfide availability at the steel surface, hydrogen uptake, and actual SCC susceptibility. Bridging this gap requires service-representative experiments on stressed prestressing steel embedded in mortar or concrete to develop reliable durability criteria and move beyond precautionary regulatory limits. Full article

Fully implicit simulation of multiphase flow in porous media requires repeated solution of large, sparse, nonsymmetric Jacobian systems, where linear solvers and preconditioners often dominate the computational cost. In field-scale models with strong well controls and well–reservoir coupling, bottom-hole pressure (BHP) constraints may introduce slowly converging pressure-related error modes that are not fully represented by pressure-only constrained pressure residual (CPR) preconditioning. This paper develops a Schur-consistent graphics processing unit (GPU) implementation of constrained pressure residual with wells and algebraic multigrid (CPRW-AMG) for the Open Porous Media (OPM) Flow simulator. The method augments the pressure coarse space with one auxiliary BHP unknown per active well while preserving a reservoir-only fine-level Krylov system. The pressure–BHP coarse operator is constructed from the same assembled effective reservoir Jacobian used by the Krylov matrix–vector product and the GPU diagonal incomplete lower–upper (DILU) smoother, avoiding inconsistent treatment of well contributions between fine and coarse levels. A GPU-resident sparse update strategy refreshes well-related coarse entries, and the NVIDIA AMGX library is used for the scalar coarse solve. Benchmarks on SPE9, SPE10, Sleipner, and Norne cover small well-coupled, highly heterogeneous carbon dioxide storage and field-realistic reservoir models. Compared with CPU CPRW-AMG, the GPU implementation reduces total runtime by factors of 1.69–8.78 and achieves linear-solve speedups of up to 17.96×. Compared with GPU CPR-AMG, the performance benefit is case-dependent, indicating that CPRW-AMG is most effective when the reduction in well-induced slow error modes compensates for the additional coarse-level cost. Full article

Renewable energy generation data usually exhibit strong spatial correlations and temporal continuity, but measurement curves from wind and photovoltaic stations often contain sporadic missing entries and continuous missing segments due to communication interruptions, device failures, and abnormal monitoring. Existing spatio-temporal imputation methods commonly rely on deterministic reconstruction or generative processes initialized from standard Gaussian noise, which limits their ability to exploit local spatio-temporal structures in the observed data. To address this problem, we propose a local Gaussian process (GP) prior-guided mask-aware conditional flow matching framework for renewable energy imputation (LG-MACFM). Connected missing positions are grouped into bounded blocks, and a local set of relevant observations is used to construct a joint GP-informed source prior for each block, replacing the conventional isotropic Gaussian source distribution. The source-prior mean and covariance provide a structured initial state for the flow. Based on this prior, a spatio-temporal network-guided mask-aware conditional flow matching module transports GP-informed samples toward the target data distribution while strictly preserving the observed entries throughout the continuous generation path. Covariance-aware endpoint supervision accounts for source-prior uncertainty, while relation matching preserves target spatio-temporal differences. During inference, missing values are generated by solving a mask-aware ordinary differential equation (ODE) from the GP-informed initial state. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves more accurate and structurally consistent imputation results than existing baselines. Full article

Artificial-intelligence-enabled agri-food entrepreneurship is the creation of new ventures and the entrepreneurial renewal of existing firms, whose value propositions and business models are built around learning-based computational systems applied across the food value chain, from primary production and processing to distribution, consumption, and the recovery of losses and by-products. The core enabling technologies are machine learning and computer vision, generative artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models, and AI-enabled robotics and predictive analytics, deployed with complementary digital infrastructure such as the Internet of Things, big data, cloud and edge computing, blockchain, and digital twins. The concept is broader than technology adoption because its subject is the entrepreneur: how opportunities are recognised or created, how business models convert them into revenue, and why so few technically capable solutions become durable businesses. This entry makes four contributions: It specifies a mechanism—because AI lowers the cost of prediction but not of judgement, opportunities concentrate in decisions that are prediction-intensive, recurrent, and attached to an outcome that the customer already measures. It provides a taxonomy of business-model archetypes that separates value creation from value capture. It establishes the boundary conditions under which digital-entrepreneurship theory transfers to food systems—seasonality, fixed adoption costs, contested data governance, and liability. Finally, it converts the synthesis into seven testable propositions and an evidence calibration separating controlled benchmarks, field pilots, and commercial deployment. Full article

Trans-medium vehicles, including supercavitating torpedoes, submarine-launched projectiles, and high-speed hydroballistic bodies, demonstrate increasingly diverse applications in crossing the air–water interface. For such vehicles, the truncated-cone (flat-headed) configuration represents a geometry of significant engineering relevance, as it is widely adopted in the nose sections of supercavitating projectiles and certain underwater ballistic penetrators where the flat head promotes rapid vaporization and cavity generation during high-speed water entry. The air-to-water transition process typically generates extreme hydrodynamic impact loads due to complex multiphase flow and fluid–structure coupling interactions, with water compressibility playing a significant role under hydroballistic conditions. This study focuses on the water-entry regime at velocities ranging from 300 to 1100 m/s, corresponding to hydroballistic speeds relevant to supercavitating vehicles (e.g., the Shkval torpedo operates at approximately 370 m/s) and the initial impact phase of high-speed trans-medium projectiles. Parametric studies are conducted with varying entry velocities (Mach 0.20~0.73 in water), impact angles, and structural dimensions to systematically investigate their effects on the peak slamming overload, using a dynamic mesh technique coupled with a VOF multiphase model with compressibility effects for both air and water phases. The results demonstrate that compressibility effects induce a pronounced air cushion effect during water impact, wherein compression waves generated during high-speed entry dominate the load formation process. Velocity is identified as the most sensitive factor affecting peak overload, followed by structural size parameters. The findings provide valuable guidance for the protective design of high-speed water-entry structures operating in the hydroballistic regime. Full article

Background/Objectives: Inflammatory processes, including elevated pro-inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin 1β (IL-1β), have been implicated in the pathophysiology of anxiety disorders. The ketone body β-hydroxybutyrate (βHB) was shown to mitigate inflammatory processes induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) administration. It was also suggested that exogenous ketone supplements, such as ketone esters (KEs) and ketone salts (KSs), can decrease anxiogenic effects through increased blood ketone levels in the body (ketosis) in preclinical animal models. Methods: Thus, we investigated whether standard rodent food supplemented with KEKS (KEKS food: mix of a KE R/S-1,3-butanediol-acetoacetate diester and a KS Na⁺- and Ca²⁺- R/S-βHB salt in 1:1 ratio) for 7 days can alleviate the intraperitoneal (i.p.) 1 mg/kg LPS-generated anxiogenic effect in female Wistar Albino Glaxo/Rijswijk (WAG/Rij) rats. For the evaluation of anxiogenic effects, the light–dark box (LDB) test was used. Results: KEKS food significantly increased the blood R-β-hydroxybutyrate (R-βHB) level and decreased the blood glucose level compared to the baseline. Moreover, the LPS significantly (i) decreased the time spent in the light compartment, the number of chamber transitions, the number of re-entries to the light compartment and the number of rearing in the light compartment, and also (ii) increased the time of latency to the first re-entry to the light compartment compared to control. Nevertheless, KEKS food treatment abolished LPS-generated anxiety-like behavior. Conclusions: The current study demonstrated that a 7-day KEKS-supplemented diet can increase blood R-βHB levels and abolish acute LPS administration-evoked increases in anxiety levels in female WAG/Rij rats. Moreover, our results support the important role of neuroinflammation in pathological processes resulting in anxiety. Thus, these results suggest that exogenous ketone supplement-generated ketosis may be a promising therapeutic tool in the treatment of inflammatory process-mediated diseases, such as anxiety disorders. Full article

Objectives: We sought to evaluate CBCT-based dimensional outcomes, short-term dimensional changes, the feasibility of delayed implant placement, and complication profiles after defect-adapted guided bone regeneration of the atrophic edentulous maxilla using a PRGF-enriched autogenous bone/anorganic bovine bone mineral composite, including cases requiring simultaneous lateral-window sinus floor elevation. Materials and Methods: In this prospective, single-arm, non-randomized clinical case series, 11 patients with an atrophic edentulous maxilla requiring prosthetically guided reconstruction before implant placement were consecutively treated. Eligibility criteria included a residual ridge width < 6 mm and/or residual bone height < 10 mm, with ASA I–II status. Patients underwent defect-adapted GBR with a 60:40 mixture of autogenous bone and anorganic bovine bone mineral combined with plasma rich in growth factors (PRGF), stabilized within a defect-adapted barrier membrane system. Eight patients received combined vertical and horizontal augmentation, and three received horizontal augmentation, with simultaneous sinus floor elevation performed where anatomically indicated. Implants were placed in a delayed protocol at re-entry (6–9 months). Bone height and width were measured using standardized cone-beam computed tomography at baseline, immediately post-operatively, at 6–9 months, and at 12 months at three maxillary reference sites. Selected bone core biopsies obtained at re-entry were processed for descriptive histological evaluation. Results: Mean vertical bone dimension increased from 6.8 mm pre-surgically to 14.9 mm immediately postoperatively and measured 14.5 mm at 6–9 months and 13.9 mm at 12 months; mean horizontal bone dimension increased from 4.1 to 8.8 mm and measured 8.6 and 8.2 mm, respectively, at the corresponding follow-up time points. At 12 months, the retained mean dimensional gain was 7.1 mm vertically and 4.1 mm horizontally. Descriptive histological evaluation of selected bone core biopsies showed newly formed bone associated with residual bone-substitute particles and bone–biomaterial interface remodeling. In total, 75 implants were placed according to a delayed protocol. No intra-operative complications occurred. Three low-grade infections resolved without loss of the regenerative construct, whereas one high-grade infection caused complete graft loss at the affected site; it was excluded from the bone-gain analysis. Conclusions: Within its limitations, the PRGF-enriched autogenous bone/ABBM composite stabilized within a defect-adapted GBR compartment was associated with substantial vertical and horizontal augmentation of the severely atrophic edentulous maxilla, with limited mean linear dimensional reduction between the immediate postoperative and 12-month assessments. The approach enabled delayed implant placement in prosthetically guided positions. Controlled studies with longer follow-up are required to clarify the contribution of PRGF and validate the long-term functional performance of this multi-component regenerative biomaterial strategy. Full article

Background: Crude oil refinery waste sludge (COWS) ranks among the most compositionally complex and ecotoxicologically hazardous industrial residues. Although bulk total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) and summed polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) removal are routinely reported, the metabolite-level biochemical fate of individual petrogenic compounds, spanning ring dihydroxylation, catechol cleavage, and entry into central carbon metabolism, remains largely unmapped under co-composting with diverse animal manures. Objectives: This study aimed to construct a metabolite-resolved, microbially anchored biochemical fate map of crude oil sludge during co-composting. Methods: Aerobic microcosms combining crude oil sludge, garden soil, and a wood-chip bulking agent were amended separately with poultry, horse, cow, or swine/pig manure alongside an unamended control and then incubated at 22 °C for 300 days. Analyses integrated untargeted gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) metabolomics, targeted PAH quantification (EPA Methods 3541/8270), 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing (Illumina MiSeq, V1–V3, paired-end 300 bp), physicochemical monitoring, and culture-dependent isolation, with National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Mass Spectral library annotation. Results: GC-MS resolved 1169 metabolite features across 17 samples, comprising 538 annotated compounds within 11 chemical classes and 631 unknowns, of which 151 recurred in at least 10 samples. Petrogenic markers (n-alkanes C₁₄–C₃₆, hopanoids, steranes, and alkylated dibenzothiophenes) and ring-cleavage intermediates (2-hydroxyfluorene, 1,4-naphthoquinone, phenanthrene-methanol, benzenediols, butanedioic acid, fatty alcohols C₁₆–C₂₀) elucidated a four-stage degradation cascade consistent with Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways map01220 and map00624. PAH mean-removal ranked swine/pig (88.0%) > horse (87.0%) > poultry (80.5%) > cow (79.1%) > control (68.2%). Sequencing recovered 2969 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) enriched in Pseudomonas, Achromobacter, Stutzerimonas, Dietzia, Gordonia, and Mycobacterium, with Pseudomonas dominating high-removal systems; respiration peaked at 18.7 mg CO₂-C g⁻¹ in poultry treatments. Conclusions: This work establishes a metabolite-resolved map linking hydrocarbonoclastic taxa to separate degradation steps. The co-occurrence of oxygenated PAH intermediates with decreasing parent PAH concentrations serves as an indicator of transformation processes and may assist in identifying potential residual-risk signals, thereby supporting remediation evaluation and process optimization. Full article

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has significantly impacted global health, politics, medicine, finance, and society. Since 2020, various mutations have been reported, leading to drug resistance in current treatments against different SARS-CoV-2 strains and a drastic increase in cases of long-COVID. This situation underscores the urgent need to develop targeted and effective drugs to combat the spread of SARS-CoV-2 strains and their mutants, manage long-COVID symptoms and prepare for future pandemics. Currently, the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 focuses on targeting the virus’s entry and replication mechanisms to disrupt its life cycle. This review examines approved drugs, clinical candidates, and inhibitors under development, along with their bioassay data, while highlighting associated challenges. It illustrates how inhibitors bind to active sites, providing insights and emphasizing the importance of in silico studies, such as molecular docking, molecular dynamics simulation, FEP+, WaterMap, and quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) analyses, and their correlation with experimental studies in expediting the drug discovery process. The review aims to provide researchers with insights into the gaps that need to be addressed concerning mutations affecting viral entry and to prepare for future pandemics. Full article

Contemporary science has achieved extraordinary explanatory and predictive success, yet its ontological interpretation remains unsettled. This paper argues that one source of this instability lies in the inherited assumption that reality is fundamentally composed of independently existing substances. While this picture was historically fruitful, it has become increasingly difficult to sustain as a general ontology in light of three converging pressures: the relational and structural character of modern physics, the problem of emergence across levels of organization and the unresolved status of consciousness within physicalist metaphysics. The paper first examines why substance ontology has become unstable as an implicit background framework for scientific interpretation. It then argues that existing post-substance approaches, including ontic structural realism, relational interpretations of physics and process ontology, each capture important aspects of the required shift and contain important resources for moving beyond substance ontology. The present paper does not attempt to adjudicate these traditions as a whole. It instead identifies a specific generative requirement: an adequate post-substance ontology must explain how stable physical, organizational and experiential domains can be jointly situated within a common ontological framework. This requirement is identified as a generative gap in the argument developed here. In response, the paper argues that a post-substance ontology must be not only structural, relational or processual but generative. It must explain how effective objects stabilize, how levels of organization arise, how spacetime coordination becomes available, and how physical structure and conscious experience can belong to the same reality without reduction or fragmentation. The paper develops a generative-projection hypothesis that takes the derivative status of spacetime as its point of entry and introduces a generative domain, projection, invariance and compatibility as conceptual tools for articulating this ontological direction. The hypothesis is presented as preliminary rather than as a completed metaphysical system. Full article