Search Results (1,016)

As global urbanization accelerates, biophilic urbanism has emerged as a key nature-based strategy for enhancing public health. While plants are critical active agents for psychological restoration, the specific pathways through which vegetation characteristics influence human–environment interactions remain fragmented. This knowledge gap hinders the evidence-based translation of biophilic principles into actionable urban design and governance. This study conducts a systematic bibliometric analysis of 443 peer-reviewed articles (2000–2025) at the intersection of restorative landscapes, urban settings, and plant-based interventions retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection. Employing multiple visualization tools (VOSviewer, bibliometrix, and CiteSpace), we map publication trends, international collaborations, and thematic evolution. The results demonstrate a significant shift in the field, moving beyond the validation of foundational restorative theories (e.g., ART and SRT) to a more precise, implementation-oriented framework. This shift is characterized by the operationalization of vegetation attributes as controllable design variables, increasingly relating biophilic principles to broader nature-based solutions (NbS) agendas and evidence-informed urban governance. Thematic clustering analysis identified three core knowledge domains: (1) the role of plants as active exposure agents and behavioral mediators in psychological restoration; (2) the impact of specific plant characteristics—such as canopy structure, species diversity, and seasonal variation—on therapeutic outcomes; and (3) the integration of urban green spaces into broader governance frameworks to promote health equity and inclusive well-being. Our analysis highlights that plant-based interventions are evolving from aesthetic ornaments into precision design levers for fostering human–nature interactions. This study provides a science-based foundation for developing practical design guidelines and policy frameworks, shifting biophilic urbanism toward a robust governance strategy for creating equitable, restorative, and resilient cities. Full article

Mycelium-based composites (MBCs) are gaining attention as sustainable alternatives to conventional materials because they are grown biologically rather than produced through resource-intensive extraction and processing. This study evaluates MBCs for non-load-bearing wall panels and environmentally responsible substitutes for traditional building materials. A reproducible manufacturing process is presented, and heat-pressed panels are characterised for physical, mechanical, and chemical performance. Novelty lies in species-driven evaluation using rice-husk waste as the sole lignocellulosic substrate and a Queensland-native Amauroderma species. Five fungal species, Trametes hirsuta, Ganoderma sp., Amauroderma sp., Pycnoporus coccineus and Trametes versicolor, were cultivated on rice husks and compared under identical processing conditions. Statistical analysis showed species selection significantly influenced tensile strength, whereas flexural and compressive performance showed no significant interspecies differences. Panels achieved tensile, compressive, and flexural strengths up to approximately 0.47, 0.35, and 1.35 MPa, respectively, with Amauroderma exhibiting the highest stiffness and compressive performance. Composites from four of the five species showed low moisture sensitivity and favourable thermal behaviour relative to previously reported mycelium materials. These results demonstrate that fungal species selection is a key design lever and supports rice-husk-derived MBCs as sustainable insulation and non-load-bearing construction materials. Full article

Optical-fibre daylighting systems (OFDS) harvest solar energy as a renewable lighting resource by delivering sunlight deep into green buildings. This emerging technology for sustainable infrastructure reduces electric-lighting demand; however, reported performance is difficult to compare across heterogeneous designs, metrics, and validation practices. Therefore, a PRISMA 2020–reported systematic literature review (SLR) of OFDS studies from three databases (Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science; 2000–2025) was conducted, synthesising primary research that quantifies system- or component-level performance, with a focus on (i) plastic optical fibre (POF) transmission characteristics; and (ii) POF-based illuminance model validation. After de-duplication and screening, 106 primary studies were included, and two meta-analyses were performed where data were harmonised from 29 studies in total. Across reported POF configurations, attenuation ranged from 150 to 800 dB/km with a pooled mean of 332.8 dB/km, corresponding to a mean 1 m transmission of 92.7% and median design length scales of ∼3.7 m for 80% transmission and ∼11.6 m to half-power. Across illuminance validation datasets, models showed high linear agreement with experimental measurements (coefficient of determination ($R^2$) = 0.99; slope = 0.99) but typically underpredicted illuminance (geometric mean ratio = 1.16; mean absolute error (MAE) = 27.3 lux; mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) = 17.6%). These findings underscore the need for a standardised evaluation framework, including consistent metric definitions, robust uncertainty reporting, and reusable validation datasets to enable variance-weighted synthesis, while also identifying short-run POF routing as a key lever for improving system efficiency. In addition to providing the OFDS research agenda, this study serves as a roadmap for the industrial development of daylighting systems for green buildings based on harvesting solar energy, with its novelty lying in the PRISMA-guided evidence synthesis and quantitative meta-analytic consolidation of POF transmission and illuminance-validation performance. Full article

In Coiled Tubing (CT) acoustic telemetry, the reliability of surface signal reception is severely challenged by the “contact dead zone” of traditional probes and complex nonstationary environmental noise. To address these issues, this paper proposes a hardware-software integrated solution for high-fidelity signal extraction. In terms of hardware, a novel pickup probe based on the micro-lever principle is developed. By utilizing a pivoted lever structure with an optimized arm ratio of 2.6 to 1 and a full pressure-balanced mechanism, the design physically overcomes the contact dead zone inherent in traditional pressure-compensating probes and effectively isolates low frequency common-mode interference through a lateral floating architecture. In terms of software, a joint denoising model combining Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition with Adaptive Noise and wavelet thresholding is proposed. A cross-correlation coefficient criterion is introduced to adaptively screen intrinsic mode functions and eliminate residual fluid turbulence noise. Field experiments on a 1500 ft full-scale circulation loop demonstrate that the proposed probe improves the detection sensitivity of the radial breathing mode by approximately 20.6 dB compared to the baseline, while effectively eliminating stick-slip friction noise during dynamic tripping. Furthermore, the joint algorithm increases the Signal to noise Ratio by an additional 16.9 dB under typical pumping conditions of 0.5 bpm, with a normalized cross-correlation exceeding 0.96. These results verify that the proposed method effectively solves the bottleneck of weak signal detection in deep wells, providing robust technical support for CT telemetry operations. Full article

Climate change is advancing faster than conventional crop cycles, and this temporal lag represents a critical constraint on modern agricultural production. By significantly shortening generation times, speed breeding (SB) transforms breeding from a fixed constraint into a manageable experimental parameter. Today, SB is increasingly integrated within climate-smart agriculture, not only for rapid generation turnover but also through emerging stress-informed SB protocols designed to mimic key abiotic constraints. At the same time, no universal approach to SB exists. Protocols must be adapted to the highly heterogeneous species-specificities regarding photoperiodicity and light response. The accelerated loss of genetic diversity due to small populations, together with the limited ability of controlled chambers to simulate complex field conditions, remains a major challenge. This review synthesizes literature from 1995 to 2025 on the technical foundations of SB, its application in major crops, and integration with modern breeding, phenotyping, and AI-driven tools. The available knowledge and evidence indicate that SB is most effective when integrated into breeding pipelines together with multi-district field-testing and stress-aware protocols, rather than used as an isolated technique. SB provides one of the strongest levers available to accelerate crop improvement under rapidly changing climate conditions. Full article

Background/Objectives: Adopting written nutrition standards for food sold or served by local governments is a strategy for increasing access to healthier options among employees and residents. Methods: We used data from a 2021 national survey of 1982 municipal governments serving populations of 1000 or more. Among municipalities that sell or serve food or beverages, we examined the prevalence and 95% confidence intervals (CI) of those with written nutrition standards. Logistic regression models were used to obtain odds ratios and 95% CIs of written nutrition standards by municipality characteristics. Finally, we examined the prevalence including nutrition standards in food purchasing agreements or food service contracts among municipalities that sell or serve food and have written nutrition standards. Results: Among U.S. municipalities in 2021, 32% reported selling and 21% reported serving food or beverages. Among U.S. municipalities that sell or serve food or beverages, the prevalence of municipalities with written nutrition standards was 19%, and of these, 78% reported including their written nutrition standards in city food purchasing agreements or food service contracts. In adjusted analyses, the region (West vs. Midwest adjusted odds ratio [aOR]: 2.9 [95% CI: 1.7, 4.9]) and presence of a food policy council remained significantly associated with having written nutrition standards (aOR: 1.7 [1.1, 2.5]). Conclusions: Although only 1 in 5 municipalities that sell or serve food or beverages have written nutrition standards, of those that do, almost 80% reported including the standards in contracts, highlighting an important implementation lever and a public health opportunity for communities to adopt standards that offer healthy food and beverage options in public spaces. Full article

Achieving urban climate neutrality and interim mitigation targets requires rapid demand-side emission reductions, yet current user-centred interventions remain fragmented, are often concentrated on low-impact actions, and rarely provide a traceable basis for comparing outcomes, validity conditions, and equity implications across contexts. This paper reframes demand-side mitigation as a design problem of “use infrastructures”: integrated configurations of communication, product-technology, services, interaction, and governance that make low-carbon choices practicable within everyday routines. We introduce the Design Evidence Link (DEL) as a traceability device supporting ex ante configuration (selection and orchestration of levers) and ex post verification (monitoring, attribution of outcomes, and trade-off control). Through a design-led comparative analysis of nine international cases in high-impact sectors (household energy, ground mobility, food systems, and circular economy/materials), we derive and consolidate a shared extraction and coding protocol that links determinants (barriers and enablers) to design requirements and decision-grade metrics (carbon impact, adoption, continuity, and equity), explicitly qualifying uncertainty and evidence levels. Cross-case results show that effective interventions rely less on isolated information and more on coordinated action packages that reduce cognitive and economic frictions, enhance data credibility through standards and accountability, and embed follow-up mechanisms that support behavioural continuity. DEL also surfaces recurring validity conditions and failure modes (digital exclusion, trust erosion, rebound, and lock-in), translating them into operational criteria for policy and design. Compared with behaviour-change or theory-of-change framings, DEL focuses on the observable orchestration of integrated conditions of use and on the explicit grading of evidence. It should therefore be read as a structured analytical–operational framework for ex ante and ex post assessment, whose transferability remains conditional on source quality, contextual prerequisites, and the limits of the selected cases. Full article

As the global imperative for climate neutrality intensifies, hydrogen (H₂) from fossil fuels remains central to decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors. Conventional production via steam methane reforming (SMR), however, is carbon-intensive and, even with carbon capture and storage (CCS), incurs energy penalties and long-term storage constraints. This review develops a harmonized well-to-gate, market-oriented framework to evaluate methane pyrolysis (MP) relative to SMR and autothermal reforming (ATR), with or without CCS, moving beyond reactor-focused assessments toward system-level commercialization analysis. MP decomposes methane into hydrogen and solid carbon, avoiding direct CO₂ formation and the need for CCS infrastructure. Integrating with the reverse water–gas shift (RWGS) reaction enables flexible syngas production with adjustable H₂:CO ratios for methanol and chemical synthesis. A central finding is the dominant role of the “carbon lever”: MP generates approximately 3 kg of solid carbon per kg of H₂, making the carbon market’s absorptive capacity the primary scalability constraint. While carbon monetization can reduce levelized hydrogen costs, large-scale deployment would rapidly saturate existing carbon black and specialty carbon markets. Techno-economic evidence indicates that carbon prices above $500/ton are required to achieve parity with gray hydrogen, whereas $150–200/ton enables competitiveness with blue hydrogen. Lifecycle assessments further show that climate superiority over SMR or ATR with CCS requires upstream methane leakage below 0.5% and very low-carbon electricity. Commercial readiness varies, with plasma MP at TRL 8–9 and thermal, catalytic, and molten-media pathways remaining at the pilot or demonstration stage. Parametric decision-space analysis under harmonized boundary assumptions shows that MP is not a universal substitute for reforming but a conditional pathway competitive only under aligned conditions of low-leakage gas supply, low-carbon electricity, credible carbon monetization, and supportive policy incentives. The review concludes with a roadmap that highlights standardized carbon certification, end-of-life accounting, and long-duration operational data as priorities for commercialization. Full article

Over nearly two decades, ride-hailing has become a major component of urban travel, and its tendency to increase vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and worsen congestion is now well established. What remains poorly understood is why pooling, the most frequently proposed remedy, consistently falls short of theoretical expectations. With access to proprietary platform data still limited, high-fidelity simulation offers a promising path to untangle these dynamics. Here, we implement three pooling algorithms alongside a demand-following repositioning algorithm, within Berkeley Lab’s BEAM (Behavior, Energy, Autonomy, and Mobility), an open-source, agent-based regional transportation model. In a high ride-hailing adoption scenario for the San Francisco Bay Area, we find a counterintuitive result: the more stringently point-to-point pooling is promoted, the more detour burdens erode matching feasibility and reduce vehicle occupancy rather than increase it, thereby compounding rather than offsetting VMT and congestion impacts. Sensitivity analysis further identifies inflection points in pooling match rates and repositioning sensitivity beyond which deadheading and negative network feedbacks begin to dominate. These results show that pooled ride-hailing has a constrained ability to reduce network-wide impacts and that effective shared mobility requires treating pooling, repositioning, and fleet sizing as interdependent levers. Full article

Background: Oral healthcare workers play a pivotal role in exploring the significant potential of integrating oral healthcare with overall health within a healthcare system. This review aims to identify the main barriers and facilitators to integrating oral health into primary and general healthcare from the perspectives of oral healthcare professionals. Methods: The study adhered to the Arksey and O’Malley methodological framework for scoping reviews. Five main databases were systematically searched, namely Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, ProQuest, and Embase, spanning from 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2024. The Rainbow Model served as the framework for content analysis, organizing the advantages, disadvantages, barriers, and facilitators into micro, meso, and macro levels. Results: Five integration domains were identified across macro, meso, and micro levels, illustrating how oral health can be systematically embedded within general health through the utilization of oral healthcare professionals. These domains encompassed chronic disease management (screening, counseling, and referral), emergency management, electronic health records, interprofessional education, and tele-dentistry, highlighting policy, organizational, and workforce levers for strengthening care integration, enhancing system efficiency, and improving access and equity. Conclusions: This scoping review synthesizes five integration domains and four cross-cutting strategic directions for embedding oral health within broader healthcare systems. By conceptualizing integration across macro, meso, and micro levels, the study provides a structured framework that may serve as a reference for policymakers, educators, and health service leaders. The findings highlight potential enablers, such as coordinated governance, workforce development, digital infrastructure, and community engagement, which could support integration. Full article

The flying car, academically known as electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, is one of the core vehicles for low-altitude transportation. The split-type tilt-rotor cargo flying vehicle that is composed of tilt rotors, a fixed wing, and a detachable cargo pod exhibits characteristics of rotor–wing coupling and significant changes in weight and center of gravity (CG). Therefore, empirical design rules for conventional aircraft are not directly applicable. This paper presents the stability analysis of two configurations, i.e., the aerial vehicle module (AVM) and the aerial cargo configuration (ACC). The dynamic model of the proposed cargo flying vehicle is developed. Based on test data from the tilt-rotor experimental bench, the CFD models of the rotor subsystems and the full vehicle were validated and subsequently used to simulate the aerodynamic performance and stability of the flying vehicle under various operating conditions. The results indicate that vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) stability is highly sensitive to the rotor–CG lever arm. Under cruise conditions, the CG positions were tested within a range of 1.4–1.7 $c_A$ (mean aerodynamic chord) from the wing leading edge with the most favorable static stability observed at 1.62 $c_A$. Among the three proposed tilt-rotor strategies, initiating the secondary tilt rotors first while keeping the main tilt rotors vertical results in the weakest rotor–surface aerodynamic coupling, the lowest pitching-moment peaks, and favorable longitudinal static stability. These findings inform CG management, aerodynamic layout, and tilt-schedule design for split-type tilt-rotor cargo vehicles in low-altitude transportation. Full article

Piezoelectric actuators are essential for sub-millimeter robots and reconfigurable microstructures owing to their advantages, including the ability to operate in air and high-speed response. However, the substantial performance degradation observed in piezoelectric actuators with sub-micrometer thickness poses a critical challenge for the design of low-voltage microactuators capable of achieving large bending curvature. Here we develop a coupled analytical–numerical framework for designing multilayer lead zirconate titanate (PZT) nanofilm microactuators under a low voltage constraint (≤5 V). An analytical multilayer beam model is extended to incorporate thickness-dependent material properties and an interfacial dead layer that reduces the effective electric field at small thicknesses. This enables rapid exploration of curvature and the neutral-axis position as functions of the thicknesses of PZT, electrodes, and the dielectric layer. Two- and three-dimensional finite-element simulations provide complementary predictions of neutral-axis location, voltage-dependent curvature response, and eigenmode shapes. The resulting design maps reveal a non-monotonic optimum for PZT thickness in the few-hundred-nanometer range to maximize the curvature change at low voltages and identify ultrathin top electrodes as a key design lever that enhances bending by reducing parasitic stiffness while shifting the neutral axis favorably. These findings offer quantitative guidelines for designing low-voltage, high-curvature piezoelectric microactuators for microrobotic systems. Full article

High-stakes logistics, defined as supply chains where delays, quality loss, or noncompliance have serious human, safety, financial, or geopolitical consequences, are a prominent case of a broader reality: global supply chains are safety-, cost-, and time-critical socio-technical systems where forecasting quality, vendor coordination, and operational decisions shape service levels and stakeholder welfare. At the same time, decarbonization pressures and the growing use of AI for planning and control introduce new risks and trade-offs across energy, computation, and physical logistics. We develop a multi-agent framework that models supply chain system-of-systems dynamics drawing on (1) supply chain decision functions (shipment planning, sourcing and vendor management), (2) national energy-transition conditions that determine grid carbon intensity, and (3) carbon-aware computation accounting for AI-enabled decision support. Methodologically, we combine predictive analytics, unsupervised segmentation, and a carbon-cost-of-intelligence layer in a scenario-based assessment of how national energy-transition profiles–from Norway to India–affect the intensity of AI compute carbon, meaning the carbon emissions generated by the hardware and data centers required to train and run AI models. We introduce the carbon-adjusted supply chain performance (CASP) metric that integrates physical transport carbon, cold-chain overhead where applicable, and AI compute carbon into a per-package-type performance measure. Our analysis yields three actionable outputs for systems engineering and environmental management: carbon, service, and cost trade-off frontiers; governance levers (sourcing portfolio rules, buffers, and compute policies); and system-level early-warning indicators for disruption amplification. This study implements a tool-augmented multi-agent system (orchestrator, risk, and sourcing agents) using AWS bedrock and strands agents, where LLM-based agents orchestrate deterministic analytical engines through structured tool interfaces with adaptive query generation. Theoretically, we extend previous systems-of-systems and sustainable supply chain findings by formalizing package-type-specific carbon–service frontiers and by embedding AI compute carbon into a socio-technical resilience framework. Practically, the CASP benchmark, governance lever analysis, and multi-agent implementation provide decision-makers with concrete tools to compare carriers, routes, and compute strategies across countries while making transparent the trade-offs between service reliability and total carbon. Full article

External shocks and uncertainty have increased the need for urban economic resilience. As an institutionalized form of digital trade, China’s cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) Comprehensive Pilot Zones may strengthen cities’ adaptive capacity by lowering trade frictions and improving network connectivity. Using the staggered establishment of China’s CBEC Comprehensive Pilot Zones as a quasi-natural experiment, this study examines the causal and spatial effects of CBEC policy on urban economic resilience. Based on a balanced panel of 297 Chinese cities from 2011–2023, we construct a GDP-based counterfactual resilience index and estimate policy impacts with a multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) model, complemented by a spatial Durbin model (SDM). Results show that CBEC pilot zones significantly enhance urban economic resilience, with event-study estimates indicating that the effect emerges after implementation and strengthens over subsequent years. Mechanism tests suggest that the resilience gains operate through increased entrepreneurial vitality, deeper financial development, and higher green innovation output. Spatial estimates further reveal pronounced positive spillovers: policy-induced improvements in one city raise resilience in neighboring cities within the urban network. Heterogeneity analyses indicate stronger effects in large cities and in eastern and central regions, while effects are weaker in western cities. These findings highlight CBEC-oriented digital governance as an effective lever for building resilient urban economies and support cross-city coordination to amplify regional resilience dividends. Full article

Screw compressors are critical equipment in oil and gas production and transportation, where efficiency losses caused by rotor geometry, inlet pressure pulsations, and harsh climatic conditions can accumulate into substantial annual energy penalties and reliability degradation. This study provides a quantitative assessment of these coupled effects within a unified multiphysics framework that combines time-accurate transient CFD simulations based on a fixed Cartesian immersed-boundary formulation with a climate-calibrated offline physics-based digital twin—functioning as a digital shadow with one-way data flow from archival SCADA records—a reduced-order seasonal model with no real-time updating, calibrated against a full calendar year of SCADA records and validated against a held-out cold-season dataset (October–December 2022, T_amb = −15 to +8 °C); summer-period predictions rely on calibrated extrapolation beyond the validation window—an integration not previously demonstrated for oil-flooded screw compressors. Two rotor profile configurations (Type A and Type B) were analyzed to quantify geometry-driven differences in static pressure distribution, leakage tendency, and pulsation sensitivity. Transient suction conditions were modeled using harmonic and quasi-random inlet pressure disturbances to evaluate pressure amplification, phase lag, leakage intensification, and efficiency degradation. Seasonal performance was assessed by integrating temperature-dependent gas properties, oil viscosity behavior, and external heat transfer into an annual climatic load framework. The results show that inlet oscillations are amplified inside the chambers (pressure amplification factor П_p ≈ 1.95; П_p up to 2.3 under quasi-random excitation), reducing mass flow and volumetric efficiency by 8–10% and decreasing polytropic efficiency from 0.78 to 0.69–0.71, while increasing leakage by up to 27% and raising peak contact pressures to 167–171 MPa. Seasonal variability (+30 to −30 °C) increased suction density by 38% but raised drive power by ~9% due to viscosity-driven mechanical losses, producing an energy penalty up to 10.8% and an estimated annual additional consumption of approximately 186 MWh per compressor, decomposed as: cold-season contribution ~113 MWh (±10 MWh, directly field-validated against October–December 2022 SCADA data) and summer-season contribution ~51 MWh (calibrated extrapolation; additional uncertainty unquantified and not included in the ±10 MWh bound). The full annual figure of 186 MWh should be interpreted as a model-based estimate rather than a fully validated result. These findings demonstrate that rotor design optimization and mitigation of nonstationary suction effects, coupled with climate-aware offline physics-based digital shadow operation, represent high-priority levers for improving efficiency and reducing energy penalties in field conditions; reliability implications require further validation against summer-season field measurements. Full article