Search Results (1,280)

LIFE REVIVE aims to restore ecological status and ecosystem services in the Lima and Vouga river basins (NW Iberian Peninsula), where hydromorphological alteration and hydropower-driven flow regulation are major causes of water bodies failing to reach Good Ecological Status under the EU WFD. The project targets key pressures such as longitudinal fragmentation by weirs and dams, artificial flow regimes, degradation of spawning substrates, and the spread of invasive aquatic plants, which strongly affect fish communities, including sea lamprey, salmonids, and other diadromous species. Technically, the project combines barrier removal or eco-adaptation, nature-like fish passes, and spawning-habitat renaturalisation with optimized environmental flow regimes (EFR) downstream of important hydropower systems, explicitly accounting for present and future hydroclimatic scenarios. Multi-scale ecohydrological modelling (species distribution models, habitat suitability models, GLM/GAM approaches) will quantify fish–flow–habitat relationships and support the definition of operational EFR guidelines that balance ecological requirements with hydropower and agricultural constraints through joint work with the main Portuguese hydropower operator, EDP. Impact evaluation is structured around a rigorous BACI monitoring design in intervention and control tributaries, using standard WFD biological indices for fish and aquatic/riparian vegetation, hydromorphological indices (HQA, HMS, RHS), and project-specific Key Performance Indicators for water quality, biodiversity, and habitat. Expected outcomes include the restoration of at least 51 km of rivers towards free-flowing conditions, reduced hydromorphological pressure in more than 20 km of heavily modified river stretches, and measurable increases in the distribution and abundance of fish species and native vegetation. A strong communication and capacity-building programme underpins public engagement, while a decision matrix for barrier prioritization, technical workshops, and pilot replications in additional basins (e.g., Alva, Mouro, Deva, and Tea in Galicia) are designed to maximize transferability, policy uptake, and long-term sustainability of the solutions beyond the project lifetime. Full article

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly important in rural revitalization, building consensus among multiple stakeholders and developing participatory digital co-creation platforms has grown increasingly urgent. However, existing large language model (LLM) systems predominantly adopt a one-shot generation paradigm, making it challenging to accurately capture villagers’ cultural aspirations and frequently resulting in a significant disconnect between design outputs and community expectations. This situation reveals deficiencies in progressive deliberation mechanisms and cultural controllability. To address these issues, this study proposes a multimodal Participatory Landscape Demand Generation (PLDG) system to enhance AI-generated dialogue controllability, facilitate effective cultural translation in sensitive rural contexts, and promote sustainable development where landscape design both drives and reflects rural revitalization. The system leverages LLMs to simulate stakeholder participatory interactions in village landscape design scenarios. Using culturally distinctive Chinese villages as case studies, the research conducts multi-role simulated dialogues, multimodal semantic extraction, and iterative consensus-building, and evaluates the resultant data to generate landscape design proposals. The results indicate that the PLDG system significantly improves participation efficiency among diverse design stakeholders and enhances the sustainability of design decisions. Compared to conventional methods, metrics such as cultural compatibility, villager participation, and design innovation show substantial improvements. These findings demonstrate the considerable potential of human-AI collaboration in future rural planning. This study introduces the Culture Constraint-Driven Rural Landscape AI Collaborative Design Framework (PLDG), validating its practical efficacy in identifying culturally sensitive elements, ensuring cultural congruence, facilitating community participation, and fostering design innovation. Consequently, it provides a reusable, iterative operational tool for the digital renewal of sustainable rural landscapes. Full article

Lymphoid neoplasms such as multiple myeloma (MM), indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and chronic lymphocytic leukemia are increasingly managed as chronic, relapsing conditions characterized by prolonged surveillance, repeated treatment transitions, and cumulative self-management demands. These trajectories expose patients and caregivers to persistent illness uncertainty, fluctuating fear of progression, symptom and comorbidity burden, communication challenges, and treatment-related workload. This theory-informed framework development paper uses an overview of selected psycho-oncological, hematological, nursing, theoretical, and patient-reported outcome literature to propose the LUMINA framework: Longitudinal illness trajectory, Uncertainty fields, Multidimensional symptom and comorbidity load, Information and interaction context, Navigation work and self-management load, and Adaptive outcomes and alignment. LUMINA is intended as a hypothesis-generating conceptual structure to organize clinically relevant domains, clarify potential relationships among uncertainty, symptom burden, communication, navigation work, and adaptive outcomes, and guide future assessment, validation, and intervention research in chronic lymphoid neoplasms. The framework builds on prior theories of illness uncertainty, treatment burden, workload–capacity balance, fear of recurrence/progression, and lymphoma-specific qualitative work on uncertainty management and psychosocial adaptation. Potential research applications include structured assessment, shared decision-making research, and domain-matched supportive-care concepts; however, these applications remain theoretical and require empirical testing. Future studies should evaluate feasibility, acceptability, construct validity, domain overlap, predictive validity beyond quality of life, and the clinical utility of LUMINA-informed research profiles. Until such validation is available, LUMINA should be interpreted as a conceptual model rather than a validated clinical tool or care pathway. Full article

The safe disposal of sharps, particularly acupuncture and dry needling needles, remains a challenge in clinical and therapeutic environments, where inadequate management increases the risk of occupational injuries and infections. Commercial needle disposal devices are often costly, non-portable, and closed-source, limiting their adoption in small clinics and low-resource contexts. This work presents the design, construction, and validation of an open-source electric needle incinerator developed as a low-cost, safe, and reproducible alternative for biomedical waste management. The device was designed using accessible materials, 3D-printed components, and standard electronic parts, ensuring ease of replication. Detailed build and operating instructions are provided, to facilitate reproduction and future development of the system. Validation tests confirmed that the prototype incinerates individual needles in 3–5 s, processing typical sessions of 5–20 needles without performance degradation. Safety was ensured through thermal insulation, protective casing, and compliance with international standards. The fabrication cost of approximately 199 USD represents a reduction of over 65% compared to commercial devices priced at 600–1500 USD. By openly releasing the design, this contribution supports the hardware community with a replicable solution that enhances occupational safety, reduces costs, and fosters innovation in therapeutic and educational contexts. Full article

Industry 4.0 is speeding up the move to connected, data-driven, and automated production, where the Internet of Things (IoT) enables sensing, communication, and real-time support for decisions. At the same time, rapid growth in industrial IoT studies has led to scattered technologies, architectures, and results. This paper fills this gap through a systematic literature review on IoT for Industry 4.0. It also helps readers compare methods and choose suitable building blocks for real deployments today. We focus on key technologies, integration architectures, application areas, challenges, trends, and reported benefits. Using PRISMA 2020, we searched five major databases (Scopus, MDPI, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, and Web of Science) for 2020–2025 and found 584 records. After removing duplicates and screening, we kept 96 peer-reviewed studies for detailed analysis. Results show that most studies use a layered stack that combines sensing/actuation, industrial networking, data collection pipelines, and analytics across edge, fog, and cloud resources. MQTT, OPC UA, CoAP, LPWAN, and 5G connectivity are often used for communication, while RAMI 4.0, IIRA, and similar layered models guide system design. Many architectures follow an edge–cloud pattern, with growing focus on digital twin/CPS links and security-by-design. Applications are mainly smart manufacturing, predictive maintenance, and logistics, with added work in energy management, Construction 4.0, and agri-food monitoring. The key barriers remain interoperability, data quality and evaluation gaps, cybersecurity risks, legacy integration, and deployment limits. The review points to future work on edge AI/TinyML, deterministic connectivity, scalable digital twins, trusted data sharing, and sustainable industrial IoT. Full article

Poor indoor air quality, inadequate ventilation, and unnoticed local disturbances can reduce occupant well-being and compromise practical safety in smart-home and small-building environments. Although low-cost Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensing technologies are widely available, many monitoring systems remain focused on single-modality sensing and do not jointly evaluate environmental conditions, vibration activity, communication reliability, and gateway-side interpretation within one framework. This study presents the design, implementation, and proof-of-concept evaluation of a low-cost, privacy-conscious, non-imaging IoT-based indoor environment and safety-awareness monitoring framework built with ESP32/Arduino sensor nodes and a Raspberry Pi gateway. The system integrates carbon dioxide, temperature, humidity, gas-resistance/VOC-trend indication, and vibration sensing with MQTT-based communication and edge-side analytics. Controlled subsystem experiments showed that CO₂ concentration differentiated ventilation conditions, increasing from 395.47 ppm in the valid empty/open-door baseline to 1083.16 ppm in the closed occupied condition. Vibration states were distinguished using root-mean-square acceleration features across calm, surface-disturbance, footstep, play, and jump conditions. MQTT evaluation using 1000-message batches showed no observed message loss or duplicates across the tested QoS/network combinations, although latency and throughput varied by network configuration and QoS level. QoS 1 provided a practical balance between low latency and protocol-level delivery assurance in the tested local/Wi-Fi setting. A final integrated validation run further demonstrated synchronized acquisition from indoor environmental, vibration, and outdoor CO₂ reference publishers through the same Raspberry Pi gateway, with zero missing or duplicate sequence flags across the three streams. Overall, the findings indicate that lightweight open-source IoT hardware can support a reproducible building-level sensing and edge-analytics prototype for indoor environment and safety-awareness monitoring. Broader deployment in standard-sized rooms, multi-room buildings, and smart-city infrastructure remains future work. Full article

Aboriginal people in Western Australia (WA) experience poorer cancer outcomes compared to non-Aboriginal Australians, with significant disparities in cancer screening participation, later-stage diagnosis, and lower survival rates. This narrative review, informed by selected scoping methods, examined 69 peer-reviewed studies contributed by WA researchers from 2000 to 2024 to inform understanding of and address these inequities. Recurring issues requiring attention included promoting cultural safety in healthcare, addressing barriers to and disparities in cancer care, boosting cancer screening and awareness, enhancing education and communication, strengthening support systems and care navigation, improving treatment access and outcomes, and building workforce capacity. Recommendations to address the above challenges and improve cancer care and outcomes for Aboriginal people in WA included addressing barriers and disparities in cancer care; promoting effective education, communication, and culturally appropriate support; enhancing cancer screening participation and awareness initiatives; improving access to cancer treatment and outcomes; strengthening policy and system-level interventions; supporting families and communities throughout their cancer journey; building research capacity and data collection to guide Aboriginal and community-led initiatives. These recommendations highlighted that multi-level interventions are needed, from empowering Aboriginal people and strengthening communities to improving service delivery and driving systematic reforms. Overall, this narrative review informs future research, policy, and practice focused on equity to improve cancer outcomes for Aboriginal people in WA and beyond. Full article

Conversational search systems (CSSs) are emerging as a transformative interface for health information seeking, enabling multi-round, natural language interactions that integrate diverse medical resources. This scoping review synthesizes evidence on the capabilities, limitations, applications, and future directions of CSSs in healthcare. Following PRISMA-ScR guidelines, we systematically searched multidisciplinary databases (2010–2025), screened 3789 records, and included 325 studies addressing CSSs in health contexts. Analysis identified six thematic domains: (1) capabilities and limitations, (2) enhancement methods, (3) clinical applications, (4) trust, user experience, and interaction design, (5) readability, health literacy, and patient communication, and (6) cross-lingual and domain-specific adaptation. Findings show CSSs offer advantages in personalization, structured output, and patient education, but face challenges in accuracy, timeliness, and semantic consistency, particularly in high-risk clinical decision-making. Enhancement strategies such as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), knowledge graphs (KG), fine-tuning, and composite approaches improve performance, while trust-building requires transparency, empathy, and ethical safeguards. Cross-lingual disparities and cultural adaptability remain critical gaps. Overall, CSSs hold substantial potential to improve health information access and literacy, but safe, equitable, and culturally sensitive integration demands multidimensional optimization in knowledge updating, bias control, and interaction design, alongside clinician oversight, to ensure reliability and maximize public health impact. Full article

This study investigates the psychological and pedagogical architecture predicting environmental communicative agency among 304 primary school students (grades 5–6) participating in a climate change education programme. Aiming to bridge the persistent “knowledge–action gap” in sustainability education, the research identifies the cognitive, emotional, and instrumental pathways that transform children into active agents of low-carbon, pro-sustainability change in their everyday lives. Employing Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with a latent climatic knowledge literacy construct, the analysis reveals that the latent construct of General Environmental Knowledge, comprising Conceptual Climate Knowledge and Relational-Systems Climate Knowledge, is the strongest direct predictor of Environmental Communicative Agency. Intrinsic curiosity emerged as a dominant driver of practical competence, while future-oriented tools function as the critical mediator between understanding and social action. Together, these mechanisms outline a school-based pathway through which climate literacy and motivation can be converted into household-level behavioural change and intergenerational climate resilience. The findings advocate for a paradigmatic shift from knowledge transfer to building operative sustainability agency, offering a pedagogical roadmap that fosters “constructive hope” and positions children as “trusted messengers” who catalyse intergenerational learning and reverse socialization toward more sustainable lifestyles. Full article

Smart meters increasingly operate as grid-edge sensing and communication nodes, extending their role beyond conventional digital billing by generating records for local energy trading. In such settings, smart meter-derived records may support coordination, participant interaction, validation, billing, and settlement across different trading architectures. Once these records leave the metering edge, their security and privacy risks depend on how they are routed, reused, protected, and interpreted across centralized, transactive, and peer-to-peer trading workflows. In this review, we examine smart meter-based energy trading through a record-centric and framework-oriented lens. We first clarify the role of smart meters and smart meter-derived records, then compare three representative trading frameworks in terms of data-path structure, coordination pattern, trust organization, and validation or settlement positioning. Building on the comparison, we identify three lifecycle-based layers of issues: record integrity and temporal consistency, insecure transmission and interface access security, and confidentiality and privacy exposure. We also review existing mitigation mechanisms and remaining limitations for each issue layer. We conclude that future work should prioritize lifecycle-wide record governance, temporal continuity, privacy–accountability co-design, and deployable protection across hybrid trading environments. Full article

With the rapid development of clean and low-carbon energy systems, non-metallic pipelines have become increasingly important in urban gas distribution, water supply, and emerging energy-transport applications, including hydrogen service. As a critical joining technology that governs system integrity and long-term operational safety, electrofusion welding requires a comprehensive and mechanism-oriented understanding beyond empirical process control. In this study, a review is conducted on research published over the past decade in the field of electrofusion welding of non-metallic pipelines, with emphasis on fundamental technical issues including the formation and evolution of temperature fields, characteristics of the molten fusion zone and defect development, and thermo-mechanical coupling with residual stress generation. Based on a synthesis of the literature, the review clarifies the global research landscape, core research communities, and underlying knowledge structure. The results indicate a clear transition of the field from empirically driven parameter optimization toward a mechanism-based and process-controllable paradigm centered on temperature field evolution, fusion zone development, and thermo-mechanical behavior. Current research hotspots converge on HDPE material adaptability, welding process regulation, and the long-term reliability of welded joints. Building on these insights, future research directions are discussed, including mechanism-driven process design, intelligent defect identification based on multi-source data, and full-life reliability assessment under service conditions. This review provides a theoretical framework to support process optimization and engineering application of electrofusion welding in non-metallic pipeline systems. Full article

This qualitative study examines how menstruation structures the lives and futures of married adolescent girls in the Centre for Girls’ Education’s Married Adolescent Safe Spaces (MAS) program in rural northern Nigeria. It addresses a key gap by focusing on married adolescents and treating menstruation as a social process linked to early marriage, schooling, mobility, and sexual and reproductive health, rather than only a hygiene issue. Guided by an intersectional social ecological and menstrual health-and-rights framework, the study draws on three years of ethnographic fieldwork. Methods include participant observation in MAS clubs, in-depth interviews, informal group discussions, and Hausa field notes from multiple rural communities, analyzed through iterative thematic coding and collaborative memoing. Findings show that menstruation operates as a “catalyst of constraint.” Menarche signals sexual maturity, intensifying moral surveillance, prompting threats or realities of school withdrawal, and accelerating pressure toward marriage. Girls describe menstruation as a “joy killer” and becoming “a shadow of myself,” as stains, pain, and shaming by teachers and peers lead to absenteeism and, at times, permanent dropout. Silence and stigma mean that asking questions can be read as promiscuity, pushing girls away from parents, religious leaders, and male teachers and toward sisters, peers, and mentors for incomplete guidance. Structural deprivation further individualizes the burden of menstrual management. Poverty, lack of affordable pads and underwear, and inadequate WASH facilities compel girls to “make do” with cloths and other unsafe materials, restrict movement during bleeding, and engage in small income-generating activities or kin negotiations to obtain basic supplies. MAS safe spaces partially disrupt these patterns by offering rare venues to discuss menstruation openly, learn cycle tracking and hygiene, and build peer solidarity and self-advocacy. However, the analysis underscores that program benefits remain constrained when poverty, weak school infrastructure, and restrictive gender norms remain intact. The study highlights how equitable sexual and reproductive health interventions must integrate menstrual health centrally, combining safe-space programming with subsidized products, improved WASH infrastructure, protective school policies, and norm change efforts. Full article

Students’ agency and assets are increasingly recognized as central to advancing equitable educational opportunities and fostering a sense of community belonging in graduate STEMM education. However, a key question remains: where and how can students’ assets and agency be translated into forms of institutional engagement and change? We argue that course innovation and proactive pedagogy are critical sites for creating such opportunities. This article presents a case study of the design and implementation of a graduate-level JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) course. Drawing on retrospective course records from 2021 to 2025, this study demonstrates how course innovation and proactive pedagogy can foster community building while bridging students’ knowledge and skill development to institutional engagement. Within this course, proactivity, understood as a future-oriented and intentional process, emerged as a shared theme within major domains of the course design and implementation: (1) application process, (2) interdisciplinary collaboration and community building, (3) mentoring circles, (4) evaluation, and (5) supported capstone projects that help learners practice navigating institutions and leading change with the community. The course creates opportunities for institutional change, positions students as partners in reform, and translates their assets and insights into sustained institutional practices. By making the “how” of institutional change visible, this case offers generalizable, actionable design principles for curriculum reform in graduate STEMM education. Full article

The standard for effective communication between Internet of Things (IoT) devices has been demonstrated by the increasing demand for IoT technologies in Industry 5.0, along with the growing use of actuators, sensors, and automated processes in these settings. De-vice-to-device interactions controlled by communication protocols that specify data sharing are essential to effective operation. By establishing a single standard that permits plug-and-play integration and improves flexibility across various IoT devices, the IEEE 1451 standard represents an approach. This standard ensures interoperability and enables smooth communication with devices from various companies, regardless of their features. By addressing major obstacles to system integration, the IEEE 1451 standard enables IoT technologies to reach their full potential. By integrating information technology (IT) through automation and industrial control systems (ICSs), the Industrial IoT (IIoT) is transforming many industries, especially essential sectors such as energy, chemicals, oil and gas, and water plants. Although drinking water is an essential resource for life and an aspect of technological progress, little is known about the potential for cyberattacks, including the disastrous consequences they could have for water treatment plants. This re-view identifies and documents several adversarial cyberattacks targeting the water distribution and purification sector. Understanding the range of risk factors in this sector is our primary objective. This study presents a technical assessment from an IIoT perspective that addresses attack scenarios, real-world instances of cyberattacks in the water industry, a range of security challenges, and security measures. The contribution is an informative, up-to-date resource that benefits both prospective scholars and industrial practitioners. By integrating key findings to build a secure and reliable digital future, this work will advance a comprehensive understanding of the cybersecurity environment in water plants in Industry 5.0 and smart cities. Full article

Firefighting and urban search operations occur in hazardous, rapidly changing environments where timely situational awareness is critical. In indoor firefighting scenarios, responders often operate in smoke-filled and structurally complex environments with limited visibility and communication. While UAVs have been widely used in wildfire response, their deployment inside buildings remains limited due to constraints in system mass, cost, and operational complexity. This paper presents the design and preliminary validation of an attritable micro-UAV as a proof-of-concept platform for indoor search support and post-fire inspection and assessment. The platform emphasizes portability, durability, and multi-sensor integration, enabling deployment by minimally trained personnel. System requirements were derived in collaboration with the Southfield Fire Department. The finalized design achieved a total mass of 247.34 g at a cost of $2969. Experimental evaluation demonstrated reliable sensing and communication performance at the subsystem level and confirmed structural robustness through drop tests from heights up to 3 m. Endurance testing yielded a maximum flight time of 28 min, slightly below the targeted 30 min requirement. While full task-level validation in operational firefighting scenarios has not been conducted, the proposed platform establishes a foundation for future development, including system-level validation, post-fire structural assessment, and enhanced visualization interfaces for improved situational awareness in emergency response operations. Full article