Search Results (160)

As an emerging information technology, Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) provide a lot of convenience for the development of the medical field. A WBAN is composed of many miniature sensor nodes in the form of an ad hoc network, which can realize remote medical monitoring. However, the data transmission between sensor nodes in the WBAN not only consumes the energy of the node but also causes the temperature of the node to rise, thereby causing human tissue damage. Therefore, in response to the energy consumption problem in the Wireless Body Area Network and the hot node problem in the transmission path, this paper proposes a temperature state awareness-based energy-saving routing protocol (TSAER). The protocol senses the temperature state of nodes and then calculates the data receiving probability of nodes in different temperature state intervals. A benefit function based on several parameters such as the residual energy of the node, the distance to sink, and the probability of receiving data was constructed. The neighbor node with the maximum benefit function was selected as the best forwarding node, and the data was forwarded. The simulation results show that compared with the existing M-ATTEPMT and iM-SIMPLE protocols, TSAER effectively prolongs the network lifetime and controls the formation of hot nodes in the network. Full article

A clear understanding of drought perceptions and adaptation behaviors adopted by farmers is an important way to cope with climate change and achieve sustainable agricultural development. Karst is a type of landscape where the dissolving of the bedrock has created sinkholes, sinking streams, caves, springs, and other characteristic features. The study took the Huajiang karst dry-hot river valley area located in the southwestern part of Guizhou as the study area and used questionnaire survey method, the index of perception and the diversity index of adaptation strategy to explore the risk perception, adaptation perception and adaptation behavior of farmers to non-climatic droughts in the subtropical karst dry-hot valleys. A total of 530 questionnaires were distributed and 520 were returned. The results show that (1) the farmers’ risk perception of drought is stronger than adaptation perception, which shows that although farmers are well aware of the possible risks posed by drought, their subjective initiative and motivation to adapt to drought are weaker; (2) in the face of drought, farmers prioritize selected non-farm measures for adaptation, followed by crop management and finally water resource management; and (3) compared to farmers in arid and semi-arid regions, those in karst hot-dry river valleys exhibit distinct adaptive behaviors in response to drought, particularly in water resource management. Full article

Rivers are recognized as significant pathways and transportation for microplastics (MPs), an emerging contaminant, to aquatic environments. However, there is limited evidence on how riverine reservoirs influence MPs transport. To fill this gap and provide baseline empirical data and insights to South African context, the current study assessed the seasonal variation in MP densities from sediments collected upstream, within the reservoir, and downstream of the Vondo Reservoir along the Mutshindudi River. We hypothesised that MP densities would be highest within the reservoir, due to the lack of constant flow that would otherwise transport accumulated particles downriver. Additionally, we expected the cool–dry season to be associated with the highest MP densities. As expected, high MP densities were observed within the reservoir (117.38–277.46 particles kg⁻¹ dwt) when compared to the downstream (72.63–141.50 particles kg⁻¹ dwt) and upstream (28.81–91.63 particles kg⁻¹ dwt) sites of the reservoir. The cool–dry season (91.63–277.46 particles kg⁻¹ dwt) exhibited the highest MP densities compared to the hot–wet season (28.81–141.50 particles kg⁻¹ dwt). However, MP densities downstream the reservoir were higher during the hot–wet season (141.50 ± 24.34 particles kg⁻¹ dwt) compared to the cool–dry season (72.63 ± 48.85 particles kg⁻¹ dwt). The most dominant MP particles identified were white, transparent, and black fibres/filaments composed primarily of polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE). This suggests diverse sources of MP particles. No significant correlations were found between water parameters and MP densities across sampling sites and seasons, indicating a widespread and context-independent presence of MPs. These findings contribute to MP studies in freshwater environments and further reinforce the role of sediments as sink for MPs and suggest that riverine reservoirs similar to dams can trap MPs, which may then be remobilized downstream during high-flow periods. Importantly, the results of this study can support local municipalities in implementing targeted plastic pollution mitigation strategies and public awareness campaigns, particularly because the Vondo Reservoir serves as a critical water resource for surrounding communities. Full article

Blockchain technology empowers decentralized transactions in smart grids, but existing consensus algorithms face efficiency and security bottlenecks under Byzantine attacks. This article proposes the RVR consensus algorithm, which innovatively integrates dynamic reputation evaluation, verifiable random function (VRF), and a weight-driven probability election mechanism to achieve (1) behavior-aware dynamic adjustment of reputation weights and (2) manipulation-resistant random leader election via VRF. Experimental verification shows that under a silence attack, the maximum latency is reduced by 37.88% compared to HotStuff, and under a forking attack, the maximum throughput is increased by 50.66%, providing an efficient and secure new paradigm for distributed energy trading. Full article

Faced with challenges posed by sophisticated cyber attacks and dynamic characteristics of cyberspace, the autonomous cyber defense (ACD) technology has shown its effectiveness. However, traditional decision-making methods for ACD are unable to effectively characterize the network topology and internode dependencies, which makes it difficult for defenders to identify key nodes and critical attack paths. Therefore, this paper proposes an enhanced decision-making method combining graph embedding with reinforcement learning algorithms. By constructing a game model for cyber confrontations, this paper models important elements of the network topology for decision-making, which guide the defender to dynamically optimize its strategy based on topology awareness. We improve the reinforcement learning with the Node2vec algorithm to characterize information for the defender from the network. And, node attributes and network structural features are embedded into low-dimensional vectors instead of using traditional one-hot encoding, which can address the perceptual bottleneck in high-dimensional sparse environments. Meanwhile, the algorithm training environment Cyberwheel is extended by adding new fine-grained defense mechanisms to enhance the utility and portability of ACD. In experiments, our decision-making method based on graph embedding is compared and analyzed with traditional perception methods. The results show and verify the superior performance of our approach in the strategy selection of defensive decision-making. Also, diverse parameters of the graph representation model Node2vec are analyzed and compared to find the impact on the enhancement of the embedding effectiveness for the decision-making of ACD. Full article

Maintaining the physiological acid–base balance of the skin is critical to preserving the integrity of the epidermal barrier and preventing irritation. This study investigates the short-term effects of natural soaps, prepared using cold and hot processes, on skin surface pH. A double-blind, controlled design was applied to assess changes in pH following application of soap formulations. pH levels were measured in vivo using non-invasive instrumentation at baseline and 2, 15 and 30 min post-application in 41 adult volunteers. The results demonstrated a significant increase in skin pH immediately after exposure to both types of natural soap, with elevated values persisting for up to 30 min. These changes were associated with potential disruption of the skin’s acid mantle and reduced buffering capacity. The findings highlight the importance of pH considerations in the formulation and routine use of natural cleansers. Although natural soaps are often perceived as gentle alternatives, their alkalinity may transiently disturb the skin’s acid–base homeostasis, potentially leading to increased transepidermal water loss and barrier impairment. This study supports the need for reformulation strategies and consumer awareness regarding the physicochemical impact of cleansing agents on skin health. Full article

The reduction of harmful emissions is shaping trends across many industries, including architecture and building. With rising ecological awareness and the threat of climate change, architects, construction engineers, and developers are focusing on innovative solutions to minimize the construction sector’s environmental impact. This paper presents a technical and management approach system using renewable energy sources, based on an existing single-family house with known energy consumption. The aim is to achieve energy independence by relying solely on on-site electricity generation and storage, while remaining connected to water and sewage infrastructure. Utilizing renewable energy sources enhances self-sufficiency and investment profitability. The study evaluates the house’s energy consumption to optimally select electricity supply solutions, including a small wind farm and photovoltaic installation integrated with appropriate electricity storage. This is crucial due to the air heat pump used for heating and domestic hot water, which requires electricity. An hourly simulation of the system’s operation over a year verified the adequacy of the selected devices. Additionally, two different locations were analyzed to assess how varying climate and wind conditions influence the design and performance of off-grid energy systems. The analysis showed that solar and wind systems can meet annual energy demand, but limited storage capacity prevents full autonomy. Replacing the heat pump with a biomass boiler reduces electricity use by about 25% and battery needs by 40%, though seasonal energy surpluses remain a challenge. This concept aligns with the goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050. Full article

This review focuses on Cannabis Hyperemesis Syndrome (CHS) in youth, a condition linked to chronic cannabis use and characterized by cyclic vomiting, abdominal pain, and dehydration. The objectives were to explore CHS progression in youth and its impact on health, and to assess current treatment strategies. There are the three distinct phases of CHS: prodromal, hyperemetic, and recovery. During the prodromal phase, individuals experience early morning nausea and discomfort, often mistakenly alleviated by continued cannabis use. The hyperemetic phase is marked by severe vomiting, dehydration, and complications like electrolyte imbalances, leading to potentially serious health risks. Temporary relief may be experienced through hot showers or baths. In the recovery phase, symptoms gradually resolve, and normal eating and bathing habits return. The review emphasizes the physical and psychological impacts of CHS on youth, highlighting the potential for misdiagnosis and the importance of early intervention. It stresses the need for targeted educational efforts in schools, healthcare settings, and public health campaigns to prevent delayed diagnosis and improve outcomes. Findings underscore the importance of increasing healthcare provider awareness and promoting preventive education. The review also advocates for further research into CHS pathophysiology to improve diagnostic and treatment protocols for young populations. Full article

Hepatitis E Virus (HEV) has gained public health attention as one of the causative agents of viral hepatitis. Our study aimed to provide data about HEV seropositivity in the Israeli general population, including its seroprevalence geographical distribution, and to identify variables as possible risk factors for HEV exposure. A seroprevalence cross-sectional study was conducted: HEV serological status was determined in 716 blood samples collected from the routine check-up blood samples. Demographic information was available for all samples. The overall prevalence of HEV IgG in an apparently healthy population in the north of Israel was 10.5%, with no evidence of positive HEV IgM. There was a significant association between HEV seropositivity and elderly age and low socioeconomic status (SES). The age-adjusted seroprevalence was significantly lower among Jews compared to Arabs with a rate ratio of 2.02. We identified clusters (hot spots) of HEV infection in three regions under study. Our results confirmed a high prevalence of anti-HEV in the country where clinical hepatitis E is not endemic. For the first time, this study showed that a hot spot analysis was able to provide new knowledge about actual exposure zones. As HEV infection is not a notifiable disease, it is probably underdiagnosed. Thus, better awareness among physicians is warranted. Full article

With the development of society, energy application and building thermal comfort in rural residences are receiving more and more attention. The rural residences in this survey mainly cover the rural areas of 21 prefectures in Guangdong province, of which 24.7% are in the Pearl River Delta, 18.9% in western Guangdong, 13.1% in eastern Guangdong, and 43.2% in northern Guangdong. Rural household energy consumption is mainly used for lighting equipment, household appliances, and cooking equipment, where lighting equipment and household appliances mainly consume electrical energy, and cooking equipment consumes different types of energy due to the diversity of types. First, there is a wide variety and variation in rural energy consumption, with electricity and liquefied petroleum gas as the main sources of cooking energy. Hot water is mainly obtained by heating with electricity and natural gas. Secondly, for rural residents, renewable energy is too expensive to build, is also affected by the environment and weather, and is often not convenient to use. Third, rural residents generally experience a warm, humid indoor environment with adequate airflow, but poor kitchen ventilation reduces air quality satisfaction. To enhance renewable energy adoption, technological advancements and cost reductions are necessary, along with increased government efforts in awareness campaigns, policy incentives, and demonstration projects. This study analyses the rural energy structure in Guangdong, proposes the direction of rural energy optimization, and analyses rural energy use and the feasibility of renewable energy promotion, considering the population and income of rural households. Full article

In Follow-Me Mobile Edge Cloud (FMEC) environments, Virtual Network Function (VNF) instances dynamically move in tandem with user mobility. For latency-sensitive applications, hot backups aim to reduce service downtimes during primary VNF instance failures. However, as the distance between VNF instances and their hot backups shifts due to user mobility, recovery latency can sometimes exceed user expectations, leading to certain backups being perceived as unavailable. To maintain VNF reliability, it becomes essential to either deploy additional hot backups closer to the VNF instances or migrate the deemed unavailable backups to proximity, reinstating their usability. How to effectively leverage both the VNF and its failed hot backups to ensure VNF reliability, meet users’ recovery latency demands, and minimize the overall cost of hot backup migration and redeployment is a challenging problem. To address this challenge, we propose a hybrid approach combining an optimized Kuhn–Munkres algorithm and dynamic strategy selection for cost-efficient hot backup migration. The problem is first formulated as an integer linear programming model and proven Non-deterministic Polynomial-time hard (NP-hard). To address computational complexity, we propose an optimized Kuhn–Munkres algorithm with dynamic strategy selection. The Kuhn–Munkres algorithm accelerates backup migration through network preprocessing and multi-constraint candidate filtering, while adaptively choosing between migration and redeployment via real-time cost analysis. Through extensive experiments, our hybrid migration algorithm achieves equivalent user demand satisfaction as traditional methods while reducing backup VNF (BVNF) migration costs by 15%. The proposed approach combines an optimized Kuhn–Munkres algorithm for efficient candidate selection with dynamic cost-aware strategy switching, ensuring reliable latency-sensitive service in mobile edge environments. Full article

Climate change is a global phenomenon having wide-ranging social, economic, ecological, and environmental sustainability implications. This study assesses climate change awareness, understanding, causes, mitigation measures, and practices among residents of the Kathmandu Valley through a mixed-method approach. Quantitative surveys with 433 respondents and four Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) are conducted with diverse demographics. Descriptive statistics is used to summarize quantitative data, and the chi-square (χ²) test is used to measure the associations between awareness, understanding, causes, mitigation measures, and practices among various demographics. The analysis shows that respondents frequently link climate change to extreme weather events, particularly flooding, severe hot and cold waves, and changes in rain precipitation patterns. Furthermore, the respondents identify deforestation, industrialization, and fossil fuels as the primary causes, with mitigation strategies such as afforestation, recycling waste, and use of renewable energies for long-term environmental sustainability. Similarly, the survey analysis also revealed that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are major drivers of climate change; individuals, industries, and governments are held accountable for climate change with industries as key polluters. Furthermore, individuals are self-aware to adopt sustainable practices, and the government can play a vital role through policies promoting renewable energy, afforestation, and waste management, alongside raising awareness. Other highlights of the analysis have been raising voices of collective action at all levels, which is crucial to mitigate the impact of climate change. The study also addresses the gaps in comprehensive climate literacy and underscores the need for targeted educational initiatives to foster informed climate actions within the community. Likewise, the study brings the findings that policymakers should prioritize inclusive engagement strategies, ensuring that climate policies and adaptation programs are accessible, particularly to those who are less represented in environmental discourse, such as older adults and unschooled individuals. Full article

The performance of photovoltaic modules determines the lifetime of solar cells; however, accurate detection remains a challenge when facing smaller defects. To address this problem, in this paper, we propose a YOLO-WAD model based on YOLOv10n. Firstly, we replace C2f (CSP bottleneck with two convolutions) with C2f-WTConv (CSP bottleneck with two convolutions–wavelet transform convolution) in the backbone network to enlarge the receptive field and better extract the features of small-target defects (hot spots). Secondly, an ASF structure is introduced in the neck, which effectively fuses the different levels of output features extracted by the backbone network and enhances the model’s ability to detect small objects. Subsequently, an additional detection layer is added to the neck, and C2f is replaced by C2f-EMA (CSP bottleneck with two convolutions–efficient multi-scale attention mechanism), which can redistribute feature weights and prioritize relevant features and spatial details across image channels to improve feature extraction. Finally, the DyHead (dynamic head) detection head is introduced, which enables comprehensive scale, spatial, and channel awareness. This greatly enhances the model’s ability to classify and localize small-target defects. The experimental results show that YOLO-WAD detects our dataset with an overall accuracy of 95.6%, with the small-target defect detection accuracy reaching 86.3%, which is 4.1% and 9.5% higher than YOLOv10n and current mainstream models, verifying the feasibility of our algorithm. Full article

Background: A knowledge gap exists on population understanding and perspectives of menopause. To better support females, it is important to understand different population groups’ perceived knowledge of and attitudes towards menopause. This study explored perceived knowledge of menopause, awareness of menopausal symptoms, perceived negative impacts of menopause on females’ lives, and attitudes towards menopause. Methods: A national cross-sectional survey (n = 1020) was conducted with residents in Wales aged 16+ years as part of a larger population panel using a multi-method approach (online, telephone, and face-to-face), stratified by NHS health board area, age, sex, deprivation, and ethnicity. Questions on menopause were developed by the research team. Results: Nearly a third (31.1%) of participants reported having low knowledge of menopause, with younger age groups and males reporting the lowest knowledge. Hot flushes were the most recognised menopause symptom (92.2%). The symptom with the greatest gap in awareness between age groups, sexes, and deprivation quintiles was problems with memory or concentration. Most participants perceived menopause to have a large negative impact on females’ mental health (76.1%), working life (69.7%) and physical health (69.6%). Females and 30–49-year-olds were more likely to perceive large negative impacts across all three domains. Most participants (77.8%) agreed that more public discussion is needed on menopause to increase understanding. The greatest support for increasing public discussion was found amongst females and people aged 30–49 years old. Conclusions: At a population level, perceived knowledge of menopause and associated symptoms and perceived impacts on females’ lives varied across socio-demographic groups. While males were less knowledgeable than females, most males perceived negative impacts on females’ lives and agreed with action to improve the menopausal environment. Increasing knowledge in those who experience menopause and in those who support those who experience menopause could help females have a more positive transition process. Full article

This study investigates public perceptions in Texas regarding two common calf disbudding methods used in dairy farming: caustic paste and hot iron. With growing consumer interest in humane animal treatment, understanding the preferences for these methods provides insights into public expectations of welfare in agricultural practices. The study utilized an online survey distributed to Texas residents via the Centiment research platform, assessing preferences, demographic influences, and the impact of scientific information on perceptions. Results, from 511 participants, indicated a stronger preference for caustic paste, especially among women and participants with higher education levels, while hot iron was favored more by men. Dietary habits, such as seafood and cheese consumption, also influenced preferences, with higher consumption linked to a preference for caustic paste. Viewing images of the disbudding techniques affected the willingness to purchase, consume, and serve beef, with hot iron prompting a greater negative response. The findings suggest that public knowledge and awareness can significantly impact perceptions surrounding animal welfare practices and that education could play a critical role in aligning consumer preferences with humane agricultural practices. These insights are valuable for the dairy industry, informing practices that are more aligned with public expectations and supporting the promotion of welfare-oriented disbudding methods. Full article