Search Results (346)

This study analyzes clay sources, ceramic paste recipes, and technological choices in Neolithic pottery from west Lithuania, where local hunter–fisher–gatherer groups encountered incoming communities of the Globular Amphora (GAC) and Corded Ware cultures (CWC) during the fourth to third millennium BCE. Thirty sherds from coastal Šventoji and the inland Biržulis region were analyzed by optical microscopy and SEM–EDS, revealing that most ceramic pastes comprise variegated hydromicaceous clay with quartz and feldspar. In Narva Culture pottery, vessels from the Biržulis region (Daktariškė 5) are dominated by fine-grained clay, whereas Šventoji examples are more variegated and diatom-bearing; both assemblages show organic inclusions (mussel shell, bone, charred plant material) and very low firing temperatures (<650 °C). GAC exhibits cross-site coherence, characterized by crushed, deformed, cataclastic muscovite granite in fine lacustrine clay and low firing temperatures (~650–750 °C). CWC from Daktariškė 5 geochemically clusters with Narva and hybrid-type pottery, while CWC at Šventoji aligns with GAC; both show low firing temperatures (~650–750 °C). Ceramic pastes contain argillaceous clasts partly diffused or intertwined with the main matrix; only a few show traits typical of grog. All pottery was made from local Quaternary glacial sediments, with cultural traditions and environmental context shaping clay selection and manipulation. Full article

Two-component systems (TCSs) in bacteria are often involved in the global regulation of various physiological activities and behaviours. This study investigated the GacSA TCS and DJ41_1407 transcriptional sensor adjacent to GacA in Acinetobacter baumannii ATCC 19606. The relationship between GacS, GacA, and DJ41_1407 and their functions and signal transduction mechanisms are described. A. baumannii ATCC 19606 mutants, ∆gacS, ∆gacA, and ∆DJ41_1407, were generated using markerless mutation and cultured in LB medium, then collected for RNA sequencing. It was found that GacS, GacA, and DJ41_1407 regulate a series of genes involved in carbon metabolism. Quantitative reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR) results showed that DJ41_1407 and GacA may regulate the expression of adh4, ipdC, iacH, and paa. Phos-tag™ results revealed that GacS plays a more significant role in GacA phosphorylation. GacA regulated colony size and growth conditions in rich medium. Compared to the wild-type strain, the ∆gacA and ∆gacSA mutants exhibited smaller colony sizes, and mutation of the gacS, gacA, and DJ41_1407 genes also reduced bacterial virulence as determined by the Galleria mellonella infection assay. GacA also plays a crucial role in modulating antibiotic resistance, and the ∆gacA∆DJ41_1407 mutant demonstrated greater susceptibility to antibiotics. These results highlight the multiple functions regulated by the GacSA global TCS in A. baumannii ATCC 19606. Full article

Poly(butylene adipate-co-terephthalate) (PBAT) wastewater, characterized by high chemical oxygen demand (COD) and acidity, poses significant challenges to anaerobic digestion (AD) due to toxicity and volatile fatty acids (VFAs) accumulation. This study coupled granular activated carbon (GAC) and waste iron scraps (WISs) to synergistically enhance AD performance. Batch experiments demonstrated that, compared with the control, the GAC/WISs group achieved a COD removal efficiency of 53.18% and a methane production of 207.53 ± 5.80 mL/g COD, which were 5.48- and 12.14-fold increases, respectively, while reducing the accumulation of total VFAs by 98.48% (to 15.09 mg/L). Mechanistic analysis revealed that GAC adsorbed inhibitors and enriched methanogens, while WISs buffered pH and promoted direct interspecies electron transfer (DIET) through hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis. Metagenomic sequencing showed shifts in microbial communities, with enrichment of syntrophic bacteria (Syntrophobacter) and functional genes (pta, bcd, and pccA), indicating metabolic reprogramming. This study provided a theoretical foundation and engineering strategy for the anaerobic treatment of PBAT wastewater. Full article

The Advanced Very High-Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) onboard NOAA-7 through NOAA-19 satellites has been the primary data source for two Climate Data Records (CDRs) that were developed specifically for Arctic and Antarctic studies: the AVHRR Polar Pathfinder (APP) and Extended AVHRR Polar Pathfinder (APP-x). With the decommissioning of these satellites and the loss of the AVHRR, a method for extending the CDRs with the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on NOAA’s recent satellites is presented. The goal is to produce long-term, continuous, consistent, and traceable CDRs for polar climate research. As a result, APP and APP-x can now be continued as the VIIRS Polar Pathfinder (VPP) and Extended VIIRS Polar Pathfinder (VPP-x) CDRs. To ensure consistency, a VIIRS Global Area Coverage (VGAC) dataset that is comparable to AVHRR GAC data was used to develop an analogous VIIRS Polar Pathfinder suite. Five VIIRS bands (I1, I2, M12, M15, and M16) were selected to correspond to AVHRR Channels 1, 2, 3b, 4, and 5, respectively. A multivariate regression approach was used to intercalibrate these VIIRS bands to AVHRR channels based on data from overlapping AVHRR and VIIRS observations from 2013 to 2018. The data from 2012 and 2019 were reserved for independent validation. For the Arctic region north of 60°N at 14:00/04:00 Local Solar Time (LST) during 2012–2019, mean biases between APP and VPP composites at a spatial resolution of 5 km are −0.85%/3.03% (Channel 1), −1.22%/3.65% (Channel 2), −0.18 K/0.81 K (Channel 3b), 0.01 K/0.24 K (Channel 4), and 0.07 K/0.19 K (Channel 5). Mean biases between APP-x and VPP-x at a spatial resolution of 25 km for the same region and period are −1.52%/−1.48% for surface broadband albedo, 0.69 K/0.61 K for surface skin temperature, and −0.011 m/−0.017 m for sea ice thickness. Similar results were observed for the Antarctic region south of 60°S at 14:00/02:00 LST, indicating strong agreement between APP and VPP, and between APP-x and VPP-x. Full article

Activated carbon used as one of the layers of a rain garden may be a promising solution for removing nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus compounds) from stormwater runoff. Progressive urbanization degrades the quality of stormwater that reaches water collectors. Rain gardens are a potential solution—nature-based systems that retain, infiltrate, and purify stormwater. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a model rain garden in the form of retention columns, depending on the composition of the filling material and the conditions of the simulation. The base column was filled with sand, gravel, and dolomite. The next two columns were enriched with diatomite, in a weight ratio to sand of 1:4 and 1:2, respectively. The experiment was based on four scenarios: (1) 30 min of heavy rain, (2) 2 h of rain after a drought, (3) during standard operation, and (4) with modification of the filtration material. This modification consisted of a uniform addition of granular activated carbon (GAC), which was intended to influence the column performance. The characteristics of the activated carbon were determined using XRD, SEM-EDS, and BET analysis. Pollutant concentrations were determined using a spectrophotometer and ion-selective electrodes. The analyses confirm the significant impact of the column filling materials on the efficiency of nutrient removal from stormwater, achieving even complete removal of phosphate ions, while nitrate ions were removed at a level of almost 40% and ammonium ions at >90%. Full article

Anaerobic digestion (AD) technology is universally acknowledged as the most economically viable and efficient approach for energy recovery from livestock manure. To validate the efficacy of riboflavin-functionalized carbon-based conductive materials (CCM-RF) in enhancing methane production at pilot scale, three pilot-scale upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactors were constructed and separately supplemented with carbon cloth (CC), granular activated carbon (GAC), and a combination of CC and GAC. During reactor initialization, riboflavin and a concentrated inoculum of Methanosarcina barkeri (M. barkeri) were introduced to investigate the mechanistic role of CCM-RF in promoting direct interspecies electron transfer (DIET) and optimizing treatment efficiency during anaerobic digestion of cattle manure wastewater. The results showed that all reactors improved AD performance and maintained stable operation at the OLR of 15.66 ± 1.95 kg COD/(m³·d), with a maximum OLR of 20 kg COD/(m³·d) and the HRT as short as 5 days. Among the configurations, the CC reactor outperformed the others, achieving a methane volumetric yield of 6.42 m³/(m³·d), which represents an eight-fold increase compared to conventional AD systems. Microbial community analysis revealed that, although M. barkeri was initially inoculated in large quantities, Methanothrix—a methanogen with DIET capability—eventually became the dominant species. The enrichment of Methanothrix and the simultaneous enhancement in sludge conductivity collectively verified the mechanistic role of CCM-RF in promoting CO₂-reductive methanogenesis through strengthened DIET pathways. Notably, M. barkeri showed progressive proliferation under conditions of high organic loading rates (OLR) and short hydraulic retention time (HRT). This phenomenon provides a critical theoretical basis for the development of future strategies aimed at the targeted enrichment of Methanosarcina-dominant microbial consortia. Full article

To address the challenges of small target detection in UAV aerial images—such as difficulty in feature extraction, complex background interference, high miss rates, and stringent real-time requirements—this paper proposes an innovative model series named SRTSOD-YOLO, based on YOLO11. The backbone network incorporates a Multi-scale Feature Complementary Aggregation Module (MFCAM), designed to mitigate the loss of small target information as network depth increases. By integrating channel and spatial attention mechanisms with multi-scale convolutional feature extraction, MFCAM effectively locates small objects in the image. Furthermore, we introduce a novel neck architecture termed Gated Activation Convolutional Fusion Pyramid Network (GAC-FPN). This module enhances multi-scale feature fusion by emphasizing salient features while suppressing irrelevant background information. GAC-FPN employs three key strategies: adding a detection head with a small receptive field while removing the original largest one, leveraging large-scale features more effectively, and incorporating gated activation convolutional modules. To tackle the issue of positive-negative sample imbalance, we replace the conventional binary cross-entropy loss with an adaptive threshold focal loss in the detection head, accelerating network convergence. Additionally, to accommodate diverse application scenarios, we develop multiple versions of SRTSOD-YOLO by adjusting the width and depth of the network modules: a nano version (SRTSOD-YOLO-n), small (SRTSOD-YOLO-s), medium (SRTSOD-YOLO-m), and large (SRTSOD-YOLO-l). Experimental results on the VisDrone2019 and UAVDT datasets demonstrate that SRTSOD-YOLO-n improves the mAP@0.5 by 3.1% and 1.2% compared to YOLO11n, while SRTSOD-YOLO-l achieves gains of 7.9% and 3.3% over YOLO11l, respectively. Compared to other state-of-the-art methods, SRTSOD-YOLO-l attains the highest detection accuracy while maintaining real-time performance, underscoring the superiority of the proposed approach. Full article

This study addresses volatile fatty acid (VFA) accumulation, a key issue limiting methane fermentation under high organic loading rate (OLR) conditions. Batch experiments were conducted with GAC (0–10%) under various OLRs (1:0.5–1:10) to investigate its effect on biogas yield, methane purity, and microbial interactions. Higher GAC levels (7.5% and 10%) significantly enhanced biogas production (750–800 mL/g VS) and methane concentration (–70%) while shortening stabilization time. A continuous system with 10% GAC showed suppressed VFA accumulation, stable pH (7.0–8.1), and improved organic matter degradation. This work quantitatively evaluates the link between GAC dosage, DIET induction, and microbial community shifts under high OLR. These findings highlight GAC as an operationally simple and potentially cost-beneficial strategy for stabilizing methane fermentation, particularly in decentralized or small-scale applications. Full article

Adhering to the principles of green analytical chemistry (GAC) is crucial for advancing sample pretreatment. In this work, we developed a green in-tube solid-phase microextraction (IT-SPME) material utilizing non-toxic cyclodextrin and zwitterionic polymers as co-functioning monomers. The hybrid monolithic material was synthesized within 38 min via an efficient epoxy ring-opening reaction and free radical polymerization. Comprehensive characterization confirmed a rigid framework with strong anti-swelling properties, good permeability, and high enrichment efficiency on the polymers. When coupled with HPLC-UV, the optimized IT-SPME method enabled highly sensitive detection of polypeptides (vancomycin and teicoplanin) in aqueous matrices, achieving detection limits as low as 15.0–20.0 μg L⁻¹, a wide linear range (60–800 μg L⁻¹, R² > 0.99), and good precision (RSDs = 5.9–8.2%). The prepared material demonstrated remarkable performance in real complex water samples, achieving recovery rates of up to 95.4%. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations indicated that the adsorption mechanism primarily involves hydrogen bonding and electrostatic interactions. This study presents an effective approach for the development of green chemical synthesis of extraction materials and offers a sustainable platform for monitoring trace contaminants in environmental waters. Full article

RASSF4 is a key member of the Ras-associated domain family (RASSF) that exhibits dual functionality in tumorigenesis, playing critical yet context-dependent roles in various malignancies. Its expression is epigenetically regulated through promoter hypermethylation, histone modifications, and microRNAs including miR-155 and miR-196a-5p, which directly target its 3′ untranslated region. In most cancers, such as non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and gastric adenocarcinoma (GAC), RASSF4 acts as a tumor suppressor by inhibiting the RAS/MAPK pathway while activating the Hippo signaling cascade, ultimately inducing cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. Conversely, in aRMS, RASSF4 is upregulated by the PAX3-FOXO1 fusion oncoprotein and promotes tumor growth through MST1 inhibition and subsequent YAP activation. This review systematically analyzes current evidence regarding RASSF4’s complex regulatory mechanisms and clinical significance. We propose targeted therapeutic strategies including epigenetic reactivation, gene intervention, and combination therapies. Furthermore, we identify RASSF4 as a promising diagnostic biomarker and therapeutic target based on integrated mechanistic and clinical evidence. Future research should focus on elucidating context-dependent regulatory switches, developing targeted delivery systems, and validating clinical utility through prospective trials. Full article

Depth completion aims to reconstruct dense depth maps from sparse LiDAR measurements guided by RGB images. Although BPNet enhanced depth structure perception through a bilateral propagation module and achieved state-of-the-art performance at the time, there is still room for improvement in leveraging 3D geometric priors and adaptively fusing heterogeneous modalities. To this end, we proposed GAC-Net, a Geometric–Attention Fusion Network that enhances geometric representation and cross-modal fusion. Specifically, we designed a dual-branch PointNet++-S encoder, where two PointNet++ modules with different receptive fields are applied to extract scale-aware geometric features from the back-projected sparse point cloud. These features are then fused using a channel attention mechanism to form a robust global 3D representation. A Channel Attention-Based Feature Fusion Module (CAFFM) was further introduced to adaptively integrate this geometric prior with RGB and depth features. Experiments on the KITTI depth completion benchmark demonstrated the effectiveness of GAC-Net, achieving an RMSE of 680.82 mm, ranking first among all peer-reviewed methods at the time of submission. Full article

Carbon-based metal-free catalysts, particularly those such as biomass-derived mesoporous activated carbon (AC) nanostructures, hold great promises for cost-effective and sustainable electrocatalysis for enhancing hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance in green energy technology. Neem and ginkgo leaves are rich in bioactive compounds and self-doping heteroatoms with naturally porous structures and act as a low-cost, sustainable biomass precursors for high-performance HER catalysts. In this study, mesoporous AC nanoflakes and nanosponges were synthesized using biomass precursors of neem and ginkgo leaves through a KOH activation process. Notably, AC nanosponges derived from ginkgo leaves exhibited outstanding physicochemical characteristics, including a sponge-like porous morphology with a large specific surface area of 1025 m²/g. For electrochemical evaluation in 0.5 M H₂SO₄, the G-AC sample revealed superior electrocatalytic HER performance, with a remarkably low overpotential of 26 mV at −10 mA/cm², a small Tafel slope of 24 mV/dec, and long-term durability over 30 h. These results depict biomass-derived mesoporous AC nanosponges to hold substantial potential for highly efficient hydrogen production, contributing significantly to the advancement of eco-friendly energy solutions. Full article

Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a member of the “ESKAPE” group of bacterial pathogens, exhibits biofilm-forming capacity, a key factor contributing to its resistance to conventional antibiotics and posing significant challenges in clinical treatment. To develop more effective therapeutics against such infections, identifying potential drug targets through bioinformatics analysis is essential. Consequently, we utilized data from the GEO database to investigate differentially expressed genes between planktonic and biofilm groups, and identified drug targets through the construction of a protein–protein interaction (PPI) network and the cytoHubba algorithm. Inhibitors targeting this protein were identified through molecular docking screening of the FDA-approved drug library, and their anti-biofilm activity was validated in vitro. Through bioinformatics analysis, we identified GacS as the drug target in this study for treating biofilm-related infections. Virtual screening revealed that oxidized glutathione (GSSG) and arformoterol tartrate (ARF) are both capable of tightly binding to GacS and demonstrating good stability. In vitro experiments further confirmed that both GSSG and ARF demonstrated anti-biofilm activity, particularly when combined with azithromycin (AZM) or clarithromycin (CAM), significantly enhancing the biofilm inhibition effects of these antibiotics. This combination therapy offers a new and innovative strategy to combat biofilm-associated infections, showcasing the potential of GacS inhibitors in clinical applications. In conclusion, GSSG and ARF may serve as effective GacS inhibitors, and their combination with AZM or CAM could provide a novel approach for treating biofilm-related infections, paving the way for more effective treatment options. Full article

Background/Objectives: The increased risk of developing tendinopathies in athlete populations has led to investigations of several genes associated with tendon properties, suggesting that some individuals have a greater genetic predisposition for developing tendinopathies. The main purpose of this study was to investigate how the functional polymorphisms within the COL5A1, COL27A1 and TNC genes impact the risk of developing tendinopathies in high-level Croatian athletes. Methods: For this case–control genetic study, we recruited 63 high-level athletes with a diagnosis of tendinopathies and 92 healthy asymptomatic individuals as controls. All individuals were genotyped for three single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within the COL5A1, COL27A1 and TNC genes using the pyrosequencing method. Results: TNC rs2104772 TT (p = 0.0089) and the T-T-T haplotype (p = 0.0234), constructed from rs12722, rs946053 and rs2104772, were significantly overrepresented in cases versus controls, implicating a predisposition for tendinopathies. COL27A1 rs946053 GG (p = 0.0118) and the G-A-C haplotype (p = 0.0424), constructed from rs12722, rs946053 and rs2104772, were significantly overrepresented in controls, implicating a protective role. Conclusions: These results further support associations between functional polymorphisms within the COL27A1 and TNC genes and the risk of tendinopathies in high-level athletes. Further research is needed to replicate these results in various populations and larger cohorts. Full article

This study examined the characteristics of granulated activated carbon (GAC) as an adsorbent for the removal of organic matter from the surface water of the Jala River. The adsorbent was characterized by XRD, FTIR, Raman spectroscopy, BET and SEM/EDS methods, while a detailed physicochemical characterization was performed for the water sample. The adsorption process was carried out under the following laboratory conditions: T(water) = 25 °C, individual doses of GAC off 1, 2 and 4 g/L, stirring speed of 200 rpm and time of 60 min. The research showed that GAC has good structural and textural morphological characteristics and that it can be successfully applied to remove organic matter from water (70.53%) using the lowest dose. Full article