Search Results (6,346)

Post-harvest field dew retting is a critical stage in flax fibre production because it facilitates the separation of fibre bundles from the surrounding stem tissues. In current agricultural practice, the optimum retting stop-point is still assessed largely using empirical criteria, motivating the development of quantitative indicators of retting progression. In this study, the mechanical properties of flax stems were investigated throughout a 91-day field dew retting campaign. Bending and lateral compression experiments were combined with a hollow-tube analytical model to determine equivalent flexural and compressive properties from force–deflection measurements. The equivalent flexural modulus and equivalent flexural yield strength showed an overall reduction during prolonged retting, whereas the equivalent compressive properties exhibited much less pronounced systematic variation. Additional tissue-removal experiments showed that the peripheral tissues make a substantial contribution to the whole-stem flexural response, while optical microscopy revealed increasingly evident separation and detachment of these tissues during the later stages of retting. Together, these results identify whole-stem flexural properties as promising quantitative indicators of retting progression and provide a basis for the future development of objective mechanical approaches for field retting assessment. Full article

Polymeric micelles represent a fundamental self-assembled architecture of gel-based soft materials and have emerged as promising nanocarriers for anticancer drug delivery. Their performance is largely governed by the block composition of constituent copolymers, and understanding their self-assembly behavior provides critical insights into the rational design of gel-related drug delivery systems. In this work, dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulations were performed to systematically investigate two types of mixed drug-loaded micellar systems self-assembled from a triblock copolymer mPEG-b-poly(2-(diethylamino)ethyl methacrylate)-b-PMMA (PDEAEMA, hereafter referred to as the DMA block for brevity) with either a diblock copolymer PDEAEMA-b-PMMA (polymer B) or PPEGMA-b-PDEAEMA (polymer C). By tailoring the ratios of hydrophobic (MMA, the constituent block of PMMA) and pH-sensitive (DMA) blocks, the protonation-responsive behavior, structural stability, drug loading capacity, and release kinetics of the micelles were comprehensively examined. The simulation results demonstrate that: (1) increasing the hydrophobic block ratio accelerates the protonation-triggered micellar swelling and drug release because the increased hydrophobic content enhances the core compactness which, upon protonation, generates a stronger driving force for chain extension, yet an optimal ratio (+16 MMA units) exists beyond which excessive hydrophobic blocks suppress release due to core densification; (2) increasing the pH-sensitive block ratio significantly enhances the maximum drug loading capacity (from 9.83% to 12.22% for the A/C system), but exerts only limited influence on the release rate; (3) the A/C mixed micelles with higher PEG content exhibit superior structural stability and drug loading capacity, while the A/B system with higher MMA content displays more sensitive pH-responsiveness. These findings reveal a competing mechanism between “protonation-driven force” and “structural resistance,” providing mesoscopic theoretical guidance for the rational design of pH-responsive polymeric nanocarriers and self-assembled soft materials via block ratio modulation. Full article

Large amounts of dust are generated during stainless steel production; however, the extremely poor fluidity of this dust prevents its transportation by pipeline. The effects of glidants and their particle size, addition amount, and mixing time on the fluidity of stainless steel dust (SSD) were systematically investigated. When nano-silica (particle size of 200 nm) was used as a glidant, and the added amount and mixing time were set to 5% and 10 min, respectively, the SSD exhibited the best fluidity. Generally, the repose angle and Hausner ratio (HR) of the SSD decreased by 16.8% and 14.5% to 40.05° and 1.47, respectively. In addition, the adhesion force reduced from 36 nN to 7 nN. The van der Waals force among the SSD particles also reduced, and the electrostatic repulsion force increased, providing a feasible solution to SSD fluidity problems. However, it should be noted that this study was limited to laboratory-scale measurements, and industrial-scale validation is required in future work. Full article

Bird strikes cause aircraft damage, create serious risks to human safety and can contribute to catastrophic incidents, while continuing to impose substantial economic costs on airlines. The impact combines high kinetic energy with discontinuous, strongly nonlinear contact over a short duration, producing large structural deformations; appropriate nonlinear simulation techniques are therefore required to capture this complex interaction. For this purpose, the present study applies established Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH)–finite element modelling ingredients to a controlled matrix of aerospace material systems and target geometries. The approach is first benchmarked against a published aluminium flat-plate bird-impact test using a raster-digitised force-history comparison, after which monolithic metallic and composite structures and source-described honeycomb-sandwich alternatives are assessed in flat-panel and curved leading-edge configurations. The results show that contact-force and local-displacement rankings depend strongly on target geometry and response metric, with the curved leading edge changing the ordering observed for the flat panel. More compliant systems generally permit greater local displacement, whereas stiffer systems restrict displacement but can sustain higher short-duration force peaks; consequently, no universal material ranking follows from a single response measure, and the results are most suitable for preliminary design screening. Full article

Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors translate refractive-index (RI) changes near an interface into measurable angular shifts, but a large shift is useful only when the resonance remains sufficiently narrow and deep. Conventional single-metal SPR structures typically force a trade-off in which sensitivity gains come at the cost of broader resonances or shallower reflectance dips. Here, a BAK1/Cu/Al/BaTiO₃/FASnI₃/BP multilayer SPR refractive-index sensor is proposed and optimized using the transfer matrix method (TMM) coupled with a genetic algorithm (GA). The Cu/Al bimetallic region provides a plasmonic metal core, BaTiO₃ and FASnI₃ progressively enhance the evanescent field, and black phosphorus (BP) forms the analyte-facing sensing interface. To avoid sensitivity-only optimization, the GA uses a composite sensitivity figure (CSF) that integrates angular sensitivity, resonance dip depth, and full width at half maximum as the fitness function. At an analyte refractive index (RI) of 1.355, the sensor reaches a maximum sensitivity of 510.11°/RIU and a CSF of 76.39 RIU⁻¹. These results establish the GA-CSF framework as a generalizable route to the balanced design of multilayer SPR refractive-index sensors and provide a computationally guided starting point for experimental implementation. Full article

Background: Spinal cord injury (SCI) is associated with persistent motor impairment, neuropathic pain, and reduced quality of life. While spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is an established therapy for neuropathic pain, motor effects have largely been demonstrated in experimental settings with activity-based training protocols. Whether such effects can be achieved within routine clinical care remains unclear. Case Presentation: We report on motor effects after the clinical implementation of percutaneous SCS using a commercially available system in a patient with chronic, posttraumatic, incomplete thoracic SCI. Following a standard inpatient trial and implantation of two percutaneous leads for neuropathic pain, all subsequent management, programming, and rehabilitation were conducted in an outpatient setting. Task-specific stimulation programs were iteratively developed to support functional activities during routine rehabilitation. Lower-extremity muscle strength was assessed using standardized handheld dynamometry at baseline and at monthly intervals over six months under stimulation-ON and stimulation-OFF conditions. Results: Serial dynamometry showed early stimulation-associated increases in force generation, with higher values under stimulation-ON than stimulation-OFF conditions. Over time, absolute strength values under OFF conditions also increased across individual muscle measurements, while stimulation-associated ON–OFF differences became less pronounced during intermediate follow-up but remained evident at month six. These observations included both acute stimulation-associated differences in force generation and longitudinal improvements in OFF-state motor performance. Stimulation was well tolerated during daily use and successfully integrated into outpatient rehabilitation. Functional outcomes showed concordant improvements in ambulatory performance and patient-reported domains. No stimulation-related adverse effects were observed during follow-up. Conclusions: This case illustrates how clinically indicated percutaneous SCS can be combined with motor-oriented programming within routine outpatient rehabilitation. The observed stimulation-associated motor effects and longitudinal changes in stimulation-OFF strength are limited to this individual patient and cannot establish efficacy or causality. Prospective controlled studies are needed to determine the reproducibility and clinical relevance of these observations in chronic incomplete SCI. Full article

Quasi in situ observations of the early stage of secondary recrystallization in Fe-3.25 wt.% Si high-permeability grain-oriented silicon steel indicate that large matrix grains locally impede the migration of secondary recrystallized grain boundaries. A critical grain-size criterion for identifying potential pinning grains is proposed, and a kinetic model incorporating the matrix grain-size distribution is developed. For the abnormal grain tracked at 1000 °C, the measured grain-size increment over 100 s was approximately 60 μm; the proposed pinning model predicted 47 μm, whereas the weighted-average model predicted 171 μm. Model calculations further suggest that matrix grain-size dispersion, pinning force, grain size, and relative grain-boundary energy jointly affect the early-stage growth of Goss grains. These results provide a framework for interpreting early secondary-recrystallization kinetics, while broader experimental validation is still required before the predicted parameter combinations can be used for process control. Full article

Background/Objectives: Directly printed orthodontic appliances rely mostly on vat-photopolymerisation resins; pre-polymerised thermoplastics processed by fused deposition modelling (FDM) and selective laser sintering (SLS) are a less-explored, single-component route, but are poorly characterised. This study compared six thermoplastic material–process systems, supplied for biomedical or dental use, using a single intraoral-simulating protocol. Methods: Thin specimens (25 × 5 × 0.6 mm) of polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG), polycarbonate (PC), polyamide (PA), polyether-ether-ketone (PEEK) and a thermoplastic copolyester elastomer (TPC) printed by FDM, and of polyamide 12 (PA12) by SLS, underwent three-point bending and 10 min stress relaxation at 37 °C in artificial saliva (n = 5). Differences were assessed using the Kruskal–Wallis test with Dunn post hoc comparisons (Holm correction), and Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy was used to compare virgin and printed materials for the five FDM polymers. Results: Apparent flexural moduli were 989 (PA12), 750 (PC), 687 (PEEK), 509 (PETG), 85 (PA) and 32 MPa (TPC), a very large material effect (ε² = 0.95), with post hoc comparisons separating only the extremes of that range. Relaxation over 10 min ranged from 2.6% (PC) to 22.1% (PA12) among the five materials in which it could be quantified, with TPC falling below the load-cell resolution; expressed as force, PA12 lost the most (0.86 N) and yet still delivered 3.01 N, which was above the initial force of PEEK, PETG, PA and TPC, though not separable from that of PC, which retained 97.4% of its own. Virgin and printed spectra were concordant (Pearson r ≥ 0.986, against ≤ 0.80 between different materials). Conclusions: The PA12/SLS system was the stiffest, followed by PC and PEEK, but, as the only laser-sintered material, its polymer and process effects cannot be separated. PETG and PC combine useful stiffness with accessible FDM; PA and TPC are far more compliant. These specimen-level findings provide a screening basis for selecting material–process systems for printed orthodontic appliances, preceding device-level validation. Full article

Building on Juan Linz’s well-known distinction between political religion and politicized religion, this contribution adopts the latter perspective, which involves the instrumentalization of religion for political purposes. Within this framework, the article advances the hypothesis that a new form of religiosity is emerging from the communicative practices of certain conservative right-wing and far-right party formations. Their narratives display a strong appeal to religious values by evoking forms of identification and belonging that are largely detached from lived religious practice. Drawing on three corpora comprising electoral programs, political discourses, and interview excerpts from Fratelli d’Italia (Italy), Alternative für Deutschland (Germany), and Vox (Spain), the analysis combines a keyword-in-context approach with qualitative content analysis. The resulting communicative frame is composed of terms and concepts that function as symbolic realities similar to those of traditional religion, such as religion itself, the family, and the homeland, which are rearticulated within fully secularized contexts. This symbolic and narrative reactivation of such elements not only constitutes a strategic use of religious references but also points to the emergence of a distinctively political form of religiosity, which operates both as a stimulus for electoral behavior and as a cohesive force for highly identity-oriented party communities. Full article

UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle)-to-satellite self-localization is commonly treated as satellite tile retrieval. This makes large-area search tractable, but it also forces a continuous localization problem into a discrete ranking form. Once the task is defined this way, training naturally relies on hard positive–negative tile labels, and inference tends to read coordinates from the top-ranked tile center. The model, therefore, learns image identity more than geographic continuity, while the final estimate remains vulnerable to tile-center quantization and top-1 retrieval errors. We propose PFIRNet (Probability Field Inference Network), a continuous geographic posterior inference framework that reformulates retrieval outputs as evidence for coordinate estimation rather than discrete tile selection. It uses distance-aware geographic supervision to shape candidate responses according to metric proximity, lifts top-k candidates into a coordinate-space probability field, and applies risk-calibrated multi-peak verification to update the estimate only when an alternative posterior peak is sufficiently supported. On DenseUAV, PFIRNet reduces the median localization error to 9.84 m and outperforms both one-stage retrieval methods and two-stage matching baselines. It also remains more robust under sparse and non-aligned satellite galleries. Full article

Blockchain consensus still forces a hard choice among scalability, security, and energy use. Redbelly, a leaderless Byzantine Fault Tolerance protocol, largely settles the scalability-versus-energy side of that tension, yet it accepts any cryptographically valid transaction without judging whether it is economically fraudulent or whether the node behind it is misbehaving. That blind spot is what we target. We present ML-Redbelly, a formally specified extension that attaches four learning components to the Redbelly pipeline: a LightGBM gradient-boosted fraud classifier, an Isolation Forest behavioural anomaly detector, a tabular Q-Learning agent for adaptive committee selection, and a Paillier-based federated learning aggregator that keeps model updates private. We prove that this layer leaves Redbelly’s safety and liveness intact, give pseudocode and complexity bounds for every component, and measure the system on the IEEE-CIS Fraud Detection benchmark (400,000 transactions) paired with a faithful discrete-event Redbelly simulator parameterised from measured inputs and validated against the published Redbelly deployment. LightGBM reaches an F1 of 0.783 (precision 0.858, recall 0.719, AUROC 0.963), a 34 percent relative F1 gain over the conference-baseline Random Forest at five times the inference speed. The Isolation Forest detector attains recall 0.885 at a false-positive rate of 0.047, and the Q-Learning agent settles into a stable policy within about 200 rounds across normal, bursty, and Byzantine-attack conditions. End to end, the framework sustains 48,844 TPS on 32 validators (mean over 30 seeds), and because the leaderless superblock commits every proposer’s block in parallel, this throughput advantage over leader-based BFT grows with the validator count (5.0 times PBFT and 2.9 times HotStuff at 32 validators). The learning layer costs only about 4 percent in throughput, since the measured ML inference is small next to the geo-distributed consensus round. Per-transaction energy is comparable across BFT protocols, being dominated by signature verification, and is orders of magnitude below proof-of-work chains, which expend energy on mining. One federated update epoch takes 36 s across 10 nodes with 2048-bit Paillier keys and reconstructs gradients with negligible error. All performance figures are emergent outputs of the discrete-event simulation, which reproduces the published Redbelly benchmark to within a conservative factor of about 1.7. Taken together, these results outline a simulation-validated design for making consensus intelligent as well as fast and identify the steps needed toward real-cluster deployment. Full article

This paper estimates the short-run relationship between real output growth and unemployment in Albania over 1992–2023 and asks how sensitive that relationship is to the way crisis episodes are dated. Albania offers a demanding test: a transition economy with high informality, extensive self-employment and sustained emigration, whose sample contains three major shocks in three decades. We estimate first-difference specifications in which the change in the unemployment rate is regressed on output growth, with a lagged dependent variable capturing persistence and separate indicators for the three crisis episodes. Because conventional standard errors are unreliable at this sample size, we report alternative estimators alongside bootstrap inference and a full set of residual and stability diagnostics. Our main practical result concerns crisis dating. Crisis dummies are conventionally dated to the year a crisis began internationally, but for a small open economy whose transmission is indirect, the year in which a shock reaches domestic activity need not be that year. Albania did not contract in 2008 or 2009. We date the financial-crisis indicator from an external chronology of transmission—credit growth, non-performing loans, exports, investment, remittances and the fiscal stance—assembled from contemporaneous institutional sources and fixed before estimation, which places the arrival of the crisis in the Albanian economy in 2009 and 2010. The estimated crisis coefficient is highly sensitive to that choice: a 2008-dated indicator produces the best-fitting specification in this paper on every information criterion together with a large negative coefficient; the conventional 2008–2009 window straddles the turning point and returns an estimate indistinguishable from zero; the 2009–2010 window returns a positive one. These coefficients are individually imprecise, and their intervals overlap, so we do not claim that the data identify any one dating as correct, and we do not treat the sign of an estimate as evidence for or against a window. Our claim is narrower: the substantive conclusion a reader would draw about the crisis is determined by a specification choice that the data cannot settle, so the window has to be fixed ex ante on transmission evidence and its consequences reported. We demonstrate this for Albania and do not assert that published work on other countries is affected; we specify the test that would settle it. The dating choice leaves the estimated Okun coefficient itself almost unchanged. That coefficient is negative in every specification, estimator, subsample and phase definition we report, with a normal-times impact estimate of approximately −0.21, smaller in absolute value than the range reported for advanced economies. Its statistical significance is sensitive to the mode of inference: under the null-imposed bootstrap we regard as most appropriate at this sample size, the coefficient is not significant at conventional levels in the specification that carries that estimate. The evidence for the sign of the relationship is considerably stronger than the evidence for its magnitude, and comparisons of level with advanced-economy estimates should be read against that. The three crisis coefficients are large but imprecisely estimated, and restrictions of equality between them are not rejected, so we report them as descriptive magnitudes and do not rank the episodes. We validate the modeled unemployment series against the national Labour Force Survey over the years in which both exist and re-estimate the model on the national series; the crisis coefficients and the crisis-dating pattern are essentially unchanged. We do not detect a structural break at the 1997 pyramid-scheme collapse once dynamics and crisis indicators are jointly modeled, and we do not detect cyclical asymmetry, though the confidence intervals are wide enough that both are failures to detect rather than evidence of stability or symmetry. Full article

Reservoirs are increasingly recognized as active components of the global carbon cycle, acting as both sinks and sources of organic carbon while providing essential drinking-water services. Yet, the spatiotemporal behavior of organic carbon fractions and their coupled controls by hydrological extremes, algal blooms, and reservoir operations remain poorly resolved in large, regulated water-supply reservoirs. Here, we quantified the distribution, drivers, and transport balance of organic carbon in Danjiangkou Reservoir (China) through monthly monitoring from March to December 2024 across the main reservoir, downstream reach, and major tributaries. Dissolved organic carbon (DOC), particulate organic carbon (POC), and total organic carbon (TOC) were measured together with key water-quality parameters and hydrological indicators to identify the dominant controls. Across the reservoir–tributary network, DOC, POC, and TOC ranged from 1.03 to 13.17 mg/L, 0.03 to 45.40 mg/L, and 1.34 to 48.57 mg/L, respectively, with tributaries generating the largest extremes. Reservoir waters exhibited substantially lower concentrations than tributaries and showed pronounced seasonal heterogeneity, with DOC generally higher in autumn than in summer and spring. Event-scale analyses revealed two distinct regimes: precipitation-driven runoff primarily intensified POC and TOC through terrestrial particle inputs, whereas bloom periods increased DOC and, under severe conditions, elevated TOC. POC and TOC were positively correlated with inflow, indicating that inflow dynamics govern the delivery of particulate carbon. The annual DOC transport flux was about 61 kt, with seasonal alternation between sink and source months, indicating net interception of upstream DOC under specific hydrological and operational conditions. These findings clarify how tributary forcing and reservoir regulation jointly govern carbon routing in large drinking-water reservoirs, with implications for carbon budgeting and protection of source water. Full article

Machining-induced residual stress, cutting force, and temperature govern the fatigue life, dimensional stability, and surface integrity of milled components, yet predictive models for these responses are still routinely validated only in-sample, concealing overfitting on small, single-laboratory datasets. This study re-examines a published AISI 1045 end-milling dataset (N = 24, combining one-factor-at-a-time and Taguchi L9 trials) using six regression paradigms: Multiple Linear Regression (MLR), random forest, gradient boosting, Support Vector Regression (SVR), Gaussian process regression (GPR), and a shallow neural network (ANN)—under leave-one-out cross-validation (LOO-CV). The previously reported in-sample R² of 0.84 (from a smaller n = 9 subset) was substantially higher than the LOO-CV R² of 0.167 obtained here on the full dataset; although this gap cannot be attributed to cross-validation alone, it shows a substantial in-sample/out-of-sample performance gap. SVR gave the strongest, bootstrap- and nested-CV-confirmed cross-validated residual-stress prediction (R² = 0.575); its apparent force advantage (R² = 0.558) was statistically indistinguishable from GPR and did not survive nested tuning, so it is reported cautiously. GPR was narrowly best for temperature (R² = 0.492); the ANN and SVR underperformed the linear baseline there, though nested tuning traced this largely to a fixed hyperparameter rather than the kernel method itself. Random forest permutation importance identified feed rate as the dominant residual-stress predictor, consistent with the original ANOVA. The contribution is a cross-validated, multi-paradigm reassessment with explicit uncertainty and sensitivity analysis, together with a candidate low-cost screening surrogate for AISI 1045 process planning—not a replacement for XRD or FE—and a broader caution to match model complexity to sample size. Full article

Traditional high internal phase emulsions (HIPEs) require high protein dosage and exhibit poor thermal-saline tolerance, limiting their application as clean-label food carriers for lipophilic nutrients. Sanxan (SAN) possesses unique gelling and emulsifying properties, while its application in HIPE systems remains largely unexplored. This study fabricated curcumin (Cur)-loaded HIPEs using SAN and whey protein isolate (WPI) at lower concentrations. A stable gel network formed at 0.8% SAN and 3% WPI. The oil-binding capacity reached 97.39%, remaining 96.74% and 97.03% after 0.1 M NaCl and 90 °C heating for 30 min. Cur encapsulation efficiency attained 83.23% at 3.5 mg/mL. FTIR verified non-covalent interactions, including hydrogen bonds, hydrophobic and electrostatic forces among SAN, WPI, and Cur. The SAN-WPI (SW)-HIPEs improved the antioxidant activity of Cur; compared with the WPI-HIPEs, ABTS and DPPH radical scavenging capacities increased by approximately 36.94% and 66.22%. In vitro digestion showed merely 1.06% Cur release in gastric fluid; the final intestinal release and bioavailability were 94.77% and 80.46%. This work clarifies the synergistic stabilization mechanism of SAN-WPI binary HIPEs and provides a low-protein formulation strategy to encapsulate and orally deliver lipophilic bioactives for functional food production. Full article