Search Results (1,947)

To overcome the inability of single life-based indices to represent the nonlinear degradation of asphalt-mixture bearing capacity, this study proposes a multi-index framework for splitting-fatigue damage characterization and residual-life estimation. AC-13C mixtures were tested through indirect tensile strength, constant-amplitude splitting-fatigue, and post-fatigue residual-strength tests. The framework integrates the life-based damage index D_f, residual strength ratio λ, performance damage index D_s, damage lag coefficient L, and peak displacement response, thereby distinguishing life consumption, strength loss, deformation amplification, and their asynchronous evolution. A constrained three-stage residual-strength decay model was further established to identify damage position from measured residual strength and estimate the residual-life ratio, providing greater interpretability and predictive utility for damage-position inversion and residual-life estimation than single-index or single-stage approaches. Under S = 0.3, 15 °C, and 10 Hz, damage stages were preliminarily bounded by D₁ = 0.50 and D₂ = 0.65. From D_f = 0.20 to 0.80, λ decreased from 0.928 to 0.380, while peak displacement increased from 3.076 to 4.788 mm; the late-stage attenuation and deformation rates were 4.23 and 4.44 times those in the middle stage, respectively. The model achieved R² = 0.9942, RMSE = 0.0158, and MAPE = 2.06%, demonstrating reliable damage characterization and residual-life inversion. Full article

Wang Yangming’s sage portraits functioned as material objects that transmitted Confucian orthodoxy (daotong 道統) and constructed sacrality through visual symbols, inscriptional texts, and ritual deployment. Drawing on material culture studies, this article examines the typological classification of Wang’s surviving portraits, the material presentation of their visual symbols, the discursive functions of inscriptions, and their roles in shrine worship. It argues that sacrality operated at three analytically distinct yet historically interconnected levels: semiotic, discursive, and practical. This study traces the social life of particular portraits as they circulated among private collections, academies, printed books, family spaces, and shrines, gaining, losing, and reacquiring varying degrees and modes of sacrality. Their sacrality emerged from ongoing interactions between objects and human actors, rather than inhering as a fixed, inherent attribute. The integration of image, inscription, and ritual reveals how Confucian sage portraits served as material media for advancing claims to orthodox lineage and constructing sacrality in late imperial China. Full article

Paralipsa gularis (Zeller) (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) is a storage pest native to Southeast Asia that has now become a major agricultural pest affecting maize during the late growth stage in the border regions of southern Yunnan, China, adjacent to Southeast Asia. The typical tropical monsoon climate of this region defines distinct rainy and dry seasons with marked differences in ambient humidity; however, the effects of ambient humidity on the growth and development of P. gularis remain unclear. Therefore, we evaluated the effects of five relative humidity (RH) levels on the development, survival, and reproduction of P. gularis under controlled laboratory conditions. The results indicated that RH significantly affected parameters such as the developmental duration of P. gularis at various life stages and the reproductive capacity of adults. Specifically, the response to RH on the developmental duration of P. gularis was stage-specific. Within the range of 45–90% RH, the larval developmental duration gradually shortened, with the shortest duration of 15.48 days observed at 90% RH. The developmental durations of the pupa and adult increased as RH rose. At 90% RH, the developmental durations of the pupa and adult were longest, at 6.68 days and 8.58 days, respectively. The pupation rate and pupal eclosion rate of P. gularis initially increased and then decreased as RH rose, but they did not differ significantly among RH levels. At 75% RH, the pupation rate, pupal eclosion rate, and the weights of fifth-instar larvae and pupae were numerically highest. In addition, unmated females showed the highest observed fecundity at 90% RH. Overall, P. gularis exhibited better developmental status and higher egg-laying capacity in intermediate-to-high RH (75–90%). Our results may help optimize laboratory rearing conditions for P. gularis, provide parameters for future population models, and improve integrated management strategies for this pest. Full article

Age-related declines in sport participation and performance are commonly attributed to physiological constraints. This retrospective observational study compared the age patterns of participation and performance in masters swimming using 26,789 individual-event performances (expressed as the percentage change relative to each subgroup’s mean baseline race time at the youngest age) from three World Aquatics Masters Championships (2023–2025), in four strokes, sprint (50–100 m) and endurance (400–800 m) events, and both sexes. Participation, defined as individual-event performances (not unique swimmers) per million inhabitants of the corresponding age group, was modelled with polynomial and segmented regression; race-time deterioration (% above the 25–29-year baseline) with linear, quadratic and segmented regression compared by the corrected Akaike Information Criterion (AICc). Participation followed an inverted-U trajectory in all sex × distance groups, decreasing from 27 to approximately 37 years, rising to a peak in the early fifties (≈52 years) and declining thereafter. Race times deteriorated monotonically and non-linearly; quadratic and segmented models were statistically equivalent (|ΔAICc| < 2), with the rate of deterioration rising at approximate transition ages (not precise physiological thresholds) between the late fifties and the late sixties depending on the group. This divergence suggests that, up to the sixth decade, the age pattern of participation is not a simple reflection of the age pattern of performance. We propose, as a hypothesis, not tested here and to be examined with individual-level longitudinal data, that life-course and social factors may shape engagement in competitive masters swimming before physiological constraints become predominant. Full article

Head and neck cancer (HNC) presents a significant challenge due to its anatomic complexity and treatment-related complications such as sticky saliva and xerostomia, which critically impair patients’ quality of life. Recent advancements in imaging technologies, using the concept of radiomics, offer promising approaches for predicting these complications and ultimately reducing their incidence. In this regard, robust feature selection is critical in radiomics-based predictive modeling due to the high dimensionality, redundancy, and instability of extracted imaging biomarkers. This study aims to evaluate nine distinct feature selection algorithms—Boruta, Kruskal, Recursive Maximum Relevance minimum redundancy (R-MRmr), Relief, Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE), Forward Selection (FS), Backward Elimination (BE), Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO), and Principal Component Analysis (PCA)—as a feature-transformation comparator for predicting sticky saliva and xerostomia in HNC patients using clinical, dosimetric, MRI and CT radiomics data. The study involved 250 HNC patients who underwent radiotherapy from three different institutions. From MRI and CT images, a total of 321 radiomic features (107 from each CT, $T_1$, and $T_2$-weighted MRI) along with 20 clinical and dosimetric features were extracted. The predictive robustness of feature selection methods was further evaluated across five machine-learning classifiers, including K-nearest neighbors (KNN), support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), logistic regression (LR), and eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), were initially benchmarked using a common feature selection procedure, after which SVM was selected as the reference classifier for systematic comparison of the feature-reduction approaches. Model performance was assessed using metrics objectives such as Area Under the Curve (AUC), accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity. Among the evaluated feature selection approaches, R-MRmr and Relief generally yielded better discrimination, although performance varied according to toxicity endpoint and imaging modality. The highest AUCs were 0.85 for early sticky saliva (R-MRmr, $T_1$-weighted MRI), 0.96 for early xerostomia (R-MRmr, $T_1$-weighted MRI), 0.65 for late sticky saliva (Relief, combined CT+$T_1$+$T_2$), and 0.88 for late xerostomia (Relief, $T_1$-weighted MRI). $T_1$-weighted MRI frequently provided better individual-modality performance, whereas combining all three imaging modalities did not consistently improve discrimination. These findings demonstrate that the choice of feature selection strategy and imaging modality can materially influence radiomics-based toxicity prediction. Full article

Long-term assessment of aging highway tunnels requires linking spatial geometry with time-dependent rock-lining interactions. This study examined the 1147 m left tube of the Jinan Tunnel after 23 years of service to identify deformation-sensitive zones and inform maintenance. The tunnel is excavated mainly in weathered Cambrian limestone, classified as Grade IV (poor) to Grade V (very poor) rock. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) point clouds were compared with the design profile to quantify radial deviations and clearance convergence. A representative Grade IV section with an approximately 100 m overburden was simulated for 100 years using Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua in Three Dimensions (FLAC3D) and a Burgers viscoelastic model. At LK32+370, the crown deviation reached 109 mm, compared with 87.8 mm at the right arch waist and 46.3 mm at the left sidewall. Alignment-scale average radial deviations were approximately 40–50 mm in central sections but 60–70 mm near the ends, and Grade V sections exhibited average deviations that were approximately 1.5 times those of Grade IV sections. Modeled crown displacement increased from approximately 1.6 to 2.6 mm between years 10 and 20. From years 5 to 50, lining horizontal stress at the crown increased from 5.1 to 8.5 MPa and lining vertical stress at the arch waist from 5.5 to 10.5 MPa, with the steepest growth during years 10–20 and slower growth thereafter. The resulting framework integrates full-profile TLS screening with creep-based interpretation to prioritize poor-rock, shallow-cover, weak-interlayer, and vulnerable lining zones. Because the TLS survey represents one late-life epoch, the field quantities are design-referenced deviations rather than pure 23-year deformation. Full article

Purpose: To characterize baseline spinal multimorbidity, we investigated sex-associated differences in disability, and the temporal distribution of patients aged 80 years or older presenting to a tertiary spine center over three decades. Methods: We performed a retrospective single-center study (1994–2024). Of 3199 screened unique patient medical records evaluated for low back pain, 193 unique patients were age-eligible; 71 were excluded for prespecified record-quality criteria, leaving 122 patients in the analytical cohort. Baseline Visual Analog Scale (VAS) scores were available for all 122 patients and Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) scores for 99. Diagnoses required clinical-imaging concordance. A Lumbar Pathology Count (LPC) summarized seven coexisting degenerative diagnosis categories. Temporal distributions across study periods (D1: 1994–2004, D2: 2005–2014, D3: 2015–2024) were examined descriptively. Multivariable robust linear regression evaluated the association between sex and ODI. Results: Mean age was 84.2 years, and median VAS was 8/10. Among 99 patients with ODI data, mean ODI was 47.6%. Women with complete sex and ODI data had higher disability than men (51.5% vs. 39.8%; p = 0.002; Cohen d = 0.66). In the adjusted model (n = 98), female sex remained associated with a 12.3-point higher ODI (95% CI 4.5–20.2; p = 0.002). Most patients (76.2%) had more than one lumbar diagnosis (mean LPC, 1.99), but LPC was not significantly correlated with VAS or ODI. From D2 to D3, facet arthrosis increased from 31.3% to 65.3% and central disc herniation decreased from 37.5% to 9.9%; both remained significant after Benjamini–Hochberg correction (q = 0.039). The analytical cohort comprised five patients in D1, 16 in D2, and 101 in D3. Conclusions: In this selected referral-center cohort, advanced-age patients presented with severe baseline pain, disability, and frequent coexisting lumbar degeneration. Female sex was independently associated with higher baseline disability. Temporal patient distributions reflect complete-record inclusion criteria rather than population epidemiology. These findings emphasize the necessity of explicit functional phenotyping in late-life spine care. Full article

Background: Malnutrition is a modifiable risk factor for late-life cognitive decline, but whether its cognitive correlates vary by genetic risk is unclear. We examined whether the apolipoprotein E ε4 allele (APOE4) modifies associations of the Mini-Nutritional Assessment (MNA) and its subscales with global cognition. Methods: In this cross-sectional analysis of 196 non-demented older Korean adults from the General Lifestyle and Alzheimer’s Disease (GLAD) cohort, multiple linear regression tested associations of MNA total (MNA-T), screening (MNA-S), and assessment (MNA-A) scores with the CERAD total score (TS), including MNA × APOE4 interactions. Exploratory analyses examined one representative item per a priori nutritional domain. Results: After adjustment, MNA-T (p = 0.006) and MNA-A (p = 0.003), but not MNA-S (p = 0.065), were associated with TS. APOE4 carrier status modified these associations (interaction p = 0.005 and 0.007, respectively); associations were evident in non-carriers but not in carriers, an underpowered subgroup (n = 40). Among the domain-representative items, only self-rated health survived Bonferroni correction (p = 0.006); protein intake (p = 0.025) and calf circumference (p = 0.043) showed nominal associations only. Conclusions: Better nutritional status was associated with better global cognition, predominantly in APOE4 non-carriers. These hypothesis-generating findings require confirmation in larger longitudinal and interventional studies. Full article

Accurate remaining useful life (RUL) prediction of rolling bearings is important for condition-based maintenance. This study proposes an interpretable rolling RUL prediction framework integrating adaptive multidomain degradation representation, prognostic-stage localization, and differential Gaussian process regression (Diff-GPR). A 48-dimensional feature pool is extracted from six vibration domains, and bearing-specific degradation-sensitive subsets are selected using monotonicity, trendability, robustness, and redundancy criteria. The retained features are directionally aligned, percentile-normalized, equally fused, and smoothed to construct a fusion virtual health indicator (Fusion-VHI). A two-stage localization strategy identifies sustained degradation onset and the subsequent prediction-ready point, after which Diff-GPR models multiscale degradation increments and recursively updates failure time and RUL. The framework was evaluated on all 15 bearings from the Xi’an Jiaotong University–Changxing Sumyoung Technology (XJTU-SY) dataset and all 17 bearings from the 2012 Prognostics and Health Management (PHM2012)/PRONOSTIA dataset. Full final rolling prediction coverage was achieved, with mean absolute error/root-mean-square error (MAE/RMSE) values of 6.33/7.26 min on XJTU-SY and 6.03/6.98 min on PHM2012, and overall values of 6.17/7.11 min. Representative 99% predictive intervals achieved 100% prediction-interval coverage probability, while signed-error analysis identified 13 early and 19 late final predictions with an overall mean signed error of +1.77 min. Full article

Depressive symptoms in later life develop alongside changes in physical function and contact with healthcare services, but average associations do not show how these features combine within individuals over time. We analyzed 6229 adults aged 60 years or older who participated in the 2015, 2018, and 2020 waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. Missing item data were handled with 20 multiply imputed datasets. Robust mean-shape latent growth models summarized population-average change in a six-component ADL score, a three-component healthcare-contact count, and CES-D-10 depressive-symptom scores. Functional status, healthcare contact, and depressive-symptom status were then combined into 18 joint states, with transition probabilities estimated separately for 2015–2018 and 2018–2020. Participant-level bootstrap resampling and Rubin pooling were used for interval-specific risks and prediction comparisons. ADL scores declined slightly, whereas healthcare-contact counts and CES-D-10 scores increased; the latter two changes were not constant across the two intervals. Next-wave depressive-symptom risk was driven mainly by prior depressive symptoms and was higher in functionally impaired states. The full transition distributions differed between intervals, although risk rankings among well-populated origin states were similar. Population-weighted analyses showed that common healthy-function pathways contributed more observed depressive-symptom cases than rarer severe-impairment pathways despite lower conditional risks. In temporal-transfer analysis, the full 18-state model improved AUC relative to a covariate-only model, but added little beyond prior depressive-symptom status. The multistate representation is therefore most useful for describing heterogeneous transition patterns and separating state-conditional risk from population pathway contribution, rather than as a stand-alone prediction algorithm. Full article

Down syndrome (trisomy 21) is the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability. Seizures are a frequent comorbidity in individuals with Down syndrome and can exert significant negative consequences on cognitive capacity and quality of life. In Down syndrome, seizures cluster at two extremes of the lifespan. In the first year of life, infantile epileptic spasms syndrome affects 5–10% of children with Down syndrome. The second peak occurs after age 30 years, when myoclonic seizures appear at the time of onset of Down syndrome-related dementia of the Alzheimer type (late-onset myoclonic epilepsy in Down syndrome or LOMEDS). While epilepsy at these two disparate time points has been long recognized in the Down syndrome population, the mechanisms underlying seizure pathogenesis have not been studied in detail. For example, it is not known whether the brain developmental abnormalities that characterize Down syndrome are primarily responsible for the epilepsies or whether distinct mechanisms underlie seizures at the two ages. This narrative review addresses possible mechanisms of seizure propensity across the lifespan, with special reference to potential age-specific treatments. Full article

Digital competence is commonly measured as a single summed score in research on late-life mental health, and a recent analysis of the same national survey data used here reported no adjusted association with depressive symptoms. This study aimed to describe how two domains of digital device competence relate to depressive symptoms among Korean older adults, and to test whether social activity participation accounts for part of these relations. Using the 2023 National Survey of Older Koreans (N = 9951), principal component analysis, supported by categorical confirmatory factor analysis and a split-sample check, yielded two domains: procedurally demanding life-service competence and everyday communication and media-use competence. When both domains were entered simultaneously, each was negatively associated with depressive symptoms, and bootstrap analyses indicated significant indirect associations through social activity participation for both. A 10-item summed score of the same items also showed significant direct and indirect associations as well, and first-stage and direct coefficients did not differ significantly between domains in the primary models, so disaggregation did not recover a relation that aggregation had concealed. Direct-path differences between domains and exploratory education moderation depended on model specification. Because the data are cross-sectional, the findings describe associations rather than effects. Full article

Continuous block missingness in condition monitoring data poses a major challenge to the reliability of Remaining Useful Life (RUL) prediction for industrial equipment. Existing frameworks, including direct prediction from incomplete observations and decoupled two-stage imputation–prediction pipelines, suffer from a noticeable performance decline under prolonged data voids. Although Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)-based generative models have shown promise in data repair, they remain limited by dimensionality contamination from fixed-dimension architectures, purely data-driven over-smoothing that does not explicitly account for physical degradation laws, the difficulty of capturing instance-specific heterogeneous degradation signatures, and limited characterization of downstream predictive epistemic uncertainty under reconstructed inputs. To address these limitations, we propose a two-stage reconstruction–prognosis framework with uncertainty-aware downstream prediction, integrating two core modules: a Macro-Anchored Physics-Informed Generative Adversarial Network (MAP-GAN) tailored for missing sequence reconstruction, and an Attention-Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory network integrated with Monte Carlo Dropout (Attention-BiLSTM-MCD) for uncertainty-aware prognosis, which provides an empirical estimate of predictive uncertainty under reconstructed inputs and produces RUL estimates with probabilistic intervals. Specifically, a macro-anchored micro-window generator confines the receptive field to mitigate dimensionality contamination; degradation-informed physical constraints are embedded into the adversarial objective to encourage the synthesized trajectories to satisfy physical degradation constraints; an encoder-guided latent space inversion mechanism adaptively captures individual-specific degradation patterns; and the Attention-BiLSTM-MCD approximates epistemic uncertainty to support prognostic reliability. The effectiveness of the proposed method is examined on a lithium-ion battery dataset with continuous block missingness, and is further verified through missing-pattern sensitivity analyses (missing ratios of 20–60% and early/late missing positions), physics-constraint term-wise ablation with weight sensitivity, an uncertainty-calibration analysis, and an external validation on a second, independent battery dataset. Full article

Population ageing is associated with a rising burden of cognitive decline, dementia and late-life affective disorders. Grape- and wine-derived (poly)phenols represent a chemically diverse group of bioactives whose biological relevance is shaped by structural complexity, the intervention matrix, host conjugation and gut microbial metabolism. Rather than acting as simple antioxidants, these compounds and their derived metabolites may influence interrelated pathways implicated in brain ageing, including neuroinflammation, endothelial function, synaptic plasticity, oxidative stress and gut-brain axis signalling. The gut microbiota is central to this framework as it converts poorly absorbed parent compounds into smaller phenolic metabolites and is modulated by (poly)phenol exposure. This review summarises the chemical and bioavailability features that determine intestinal and colonic availability, evaluates preclinical evidence concerning the neuroprotective potential of grape- and wine-derived (poly)phenols, and integrates clinical evidence from studies of cognitive ageing, mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. Current evidence supports biological plausibility and justifies further investigation, but clinical findings remain heterogeneous. Future studies should prioritise chemically standardised preparations, metabolomic profiling, functional microbiome readouts, and integrated cognitive, vascular and inflammatory endpoints. Full article

African swine fever virus (ASFV) is a highly pathogenic agent that poses a severe threat to the global swine industry. The biological function of A859L, an ASFV-encoded RNA helicase, remains largely elusive. Here, we show that A859L is highly conserved across diverse ASFV isolates and belongs to the SF2 superfamily of RNA helicases, possessing characteristic Walker A (GKT) and Walker B (DECH) motifs. Transcriptomic profiling at multiple time points post-infection further revealed that A859L is a late-expressed gene. Functional assays demonstrated that siRNA-mediated knockdown of A859L significantly inhibited progeny virus production in both susceptible macrophages (PAMs and BMDMs) and WSL cells. This knockdown also markedly reduced the expression of viral proteins p30 and p72, as well as the intracellular mRNA levels of other viral helicase genes (QP509L, Q706L, D1133L, and B962L), underscoring the vital role of A859L in the viral life cycle. Conversely, A859L overexpression enhanced viral propagation. Notably, pharmacological inhibition of viral helicase activity effectively suppressed ASFV replication. Collectively, our data establish A859L as a critical determinant of ASFV replication and a promising candidate for antiviral development. Full article