Search Results (2,580)

Nigerian secondary schools face significant challenges integrating fourth industrial revolution (4IR) technologies. Little is known about how contextual factors influence teachers’ familiarity with these technologies and their perceptions of student engagement, learning outcomes, and instructional efficiency. Using a convergent parallel mixed-methods design, this study examined those factors in public and private secondary schools across one Local Government Area within each of four Nigerian states (Imo, Rivers, Osun, and Kogi). The quantitative component surveyed 189 teachers (92 public, 97 private). The qualitative component interviewed nine teachers and conducted two focus groups with 12 teachers (six in each group). Quantitative findings showed that teachers reported moderate familiarity with most 4IR technologies (grand mean = 3.11) and positive perceptions of their influence on student engagement (grand mean = 3.64) and learning outcomes (grand mean = 3.80). Private school teachers reported significantly higher familiarity with six of seven technologies and more positive perceptions of engagement (p < 0.001) and learning outcomes (p < 0.001) than public school teachers, except for WhatsApp (p = 0.332). Qualitative thematic analysis revealed four themes explaining these differences: (1) structural and infrastructural inequities (electricity, internet, devices) shape technology engagement; (2) teachers sustain integration through personal financial sacrifice and informal peer support; (3) professional development is perceived as contextually disconnected; and (4) technological engagement reflects interactions between generational confidence, pedagogical identity, and school culture. The joint display of quantitative and qualitative findings shows convergence on the conclusion that infrastructure, not teacher attitude, is the main barrier to 4IR adoption. Policymakers should prioritise investment in electricity, internet, and devices over blaming teachers. Full article

Nitrites and nitrates are admitted into the body through the consumption of various foods, primarily cured meat products. These nitrites and nitrates are precursors of reactive nitrogen species NO and NO₂, which, in excess, promote nitrosative stress. Attempts have been made to combat oxidative and nitrosative stress through C₆₀ fullerenols in animal models. Furthermore, experimental and theoretical studies have shown that the use of carbon nanomaterials such as defective or doped graphene and C₆₀ metallofullerenes facilitates the capture of NO_x pollutants contained in the air. This leads us to propose that the inclusion of metals in C₆₀ fullerenols may have the potential to capture these reactive nitrogen species and be considered in nitrosative stress tests in animal models. Alternatively, viewed from another perspective, a certain grade of hydroxylation of metallofullerenes could enhance the capture of atmospheric nitrogen pollutants. Therefore, Li, Ca and Y metals were included in C₆₀ fullerenols at different coating grades. Using density functional theory (DFT), we analyzed the antiradical character of these metallofullerenols, and the adsorption energies of the free radicals (NO_x) were calculated to evaluate the ability of these metallofullerenols to adsorb these nitrogen species. Although both fullerenols and endohedral metallofullerenes have individually shown promise as radical scavengers, a systematic understanding of how the encapsulated metal and the grade of hydroxylation jointly govern the capture of nitrogen species is still lacking. In particular, it remains unclear whether increasing the number of hydroxyl groups monotonically enhances the capture capacity or whether optimal combinations of metal identity and surface functionalization exist. Addressing this gap is crucial, since excessive hydroxylation may alter the electronic structure, stability, and mechanism of interaction with NO_x radicals, potentially compromising capture capacity. Therefore, a rational evaluation that simultaneously considers electronic donor–acceptor properties, local reactivity, and adsorption thermodynamics is required to identify metallofullerenols with possible potential to sense or scavenge NO_x. Full article

This paper presents a dual-quaternion (DQ) framework for the rigid-kinematic modeling and validation of rigid hexagonal Kresling origami robots executing a prescribed FOLD–TWIST–FOLD motion. Triangular panels are modeled as rigid bodies, and crease lines are modeled as fixed revolute axes. Exact spatial 4R closure is decomposed into a primal orientation closure and a dual transported-translation closure. Under explicit non-degeneracy, paired-normal transport, and branch assumptions, the projection of the dual closure recovers a Bennett-type axis ratio. For Kresling, this result is applied only in the intersecting-axis limit d = 0, serving as a local axis-geometry diagnostic rather than a sufficient global closure criterion. The baseline three-cell module (N_s = 6, R = 48 mm, H₀ = 60 mm, initial twist 30°) executes a (−2 mm, +5°, −2 mm) actuation command over 37 states, preserving rigid-edge/panel and DQ consistency within the prescribed tolerances. Comparative benchmarks show that DQ and homogeneous-transform mappings achieve practically identical accuracy, although homogeneous transforms run faster in the tested MATLAB 2025b workload; Direct LM is faster for computing the endpoint solution, whereas DQ-parametric homotopy provides state-by-state path certification. A generalized implementation evaluates 27 configurations (21 accepted, six rejected), with all six controlled actuation-order permutations accepted. The framework serves as a pre-prototyping rigid-kinematic qualification tool that separates local axis compatibility from global rigid-origami feasibility. Full article

Under globalization, architectural forms, spatial logic, and consumption experiences have become increasingly homogeneous, making placelessness particularly evident in large-scale commercial complexes. Establishing meaningful connections between globalized commercial spaces and local culture, urban memory, and everyday life has consequently become an important issue in research on architectural cultural sustainability. Guided by critical regionalism, this study takes placelessness as its point of departure and cultural sustainability as its evaluative perspective. It develops a two-level analytical framework comprising architectural analysis and user perception evaluation and applies this framework to the Chengdu New Century Global Center. Architectural analysis examines the building’s objective characteristics in terms of spatial image, functional organization, environmental setting, and cultural expression. User perception data were collected through a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews, followed by descriptive statistics and comparative analysis across four corresponding dimensions: spatial, functional, environmental, and cultural perception. The results indicate that the building’s megascale form, contemporary architectural appearance, and multifunctional organization contribute to higher levels of spatial and functional perception. Environmental perception is also relatively positive, although deficiencies remain in resting facilities, route organization, and detailed spatial experience. By contrast, cultural perception is substantially lower than the other dimensions. The marine theme, exoticized settings, and entertainment-oriented imagery are more closely associated with a globalized consumer landscape than with the spatial translation of Chengdu’s local culture, urban memory, and everyday life. Consequently, the building’s thematic identity has not been effectively translated into users’ recognition of place-specific characteristics, suggesting that the production of commercial complex space continues to prioritize consumption efficiency over cultural expression. By operationalizing the critical regionalist concept of sense of place as an empirically assessable analytical tool, this study extends its applicability to large-scale commercial complexes and provides a diagnostic framework and practical strategies for enhancing their cultural sustainability. Full article

A tight conglomerate is mechanically heterogeneous because gravel particles, the matrix, and their contacts can perturb hydraulic-fracture paths. This study presents an exploratory comparison of three 2.0 m × 2.0 m × 1.0 m reconstituted conglomerate specimens, identified as specimen 97 (Condition A), specimen 98 (Condition B), and specimen 99 (Condition C). One meter-scale specimen was tested under each formulation condition using the same applied boundary stresses, nominal pumping rate, and fluid viscosity. Post-fracturing surface observations, inlet-pressure histories, and laboratory acoustic-emission (AE) event locations were examined. After event-quality control, DBSCAN-based spatial filtering was performed in Z-score-standardized coordinates, and three-dimensional alpha shapes were constructed from the retained event coordinates in meters to calculate geometric AE-event-envelope volumes. The external surface-fracture traces were more spatially distributed in specimen 97 and more localized in specimen 99. The available DBSCAN–alpha-shape calculation outputs yielded geometric AE-event-envelope volumes of 0.2832, 0.2460, and 0.0937 m³ for specimens 97, 98, and 99, respectively. Because only one specimen was tested under each condition, the specimen formulations and gravel characteristics were not identical, the gravel–matrix interfacial properties were not measured directly, and the pumping histories differed, the observations were interpreted as descriptive case differences rather than as a statistically validated single-factor relationship. Full article

Bats are crucial reservoirs for coronaviruses, yet surveillance in the southeastern United States remains limited. Using carcasses submitted from public health surveillance for rabies, we screened 170 non-rabid bat carcasses from Alabama using a tiered real-time PCR framework targeting broad Alpha- and Betacoronavirus, alongside specific Sarbecovirus and Merbecovirus lineages. Overall, coronavirus prevalence was 3.5% (6/170), with all positives resolving as Alphacoronavirus. Detections spanned six counties and three bat taxa: Tadarida brasiliensis, Myotis spp., and Eptesicus fuscus, with the latter accounting for most cases (4/6; 66.7%). Sequence and phylogenetic analyses revealed two distinct evolutionary lineages. One isolate, ID-51 (E. fuscus), exhibited relative conservation, sharing 95.3% nucleotide and 93.0% amino acid identity with known references, forming a distinct sibling branch. Conversely, a highly divergent cluster of five isolates (ID-06, -145, -147, -169, -175) displayed remarkably low nucleotide similarities (83.7%–84.3%) to GenBank references despite maintaining high amino acid conservation (98.3%–100%). Topological shifts between nucleotide and amino acid phylogenies demonstrated genetic variation within this novel cluster. These findings underscore a previously uncharacterized genetic diversity of coronaviruses in regional US wildlife, highlighting the necessity of expanded local genomic surveillance. Full article

Traveling-wave fault location in distribution networks confronts two fundamental challenges: insufficient robustness of the cost function against heavy-tailed synchronization noise, and the location-resolution bottleneck imposed by the discrete search step. Starting from first physical principles, we identify that faulty-branch identity is encoded in the ordering pattern of multi-terminal TW arrival times rather than in their absolute values. Building on this insight, we propose a faulty-branch identification and precise fault-location method that integrates amplitude-assisted rank correlation (AAC) features with random forest (RF). At the theoretical level, we employ Hampel’s finite-sample breakdown-point framework to quantitatively establish that the $L_2$ cost function has an asymptotic breakdown point of zero, whereas the Spearman rank correlation coefficient attains an asymptotic breakdown point of 0.5—providing a rigorous robustness justification for replacing the $L_2$ residual with a rank-consistency cost. At the algorithmic level, the method consists of a three-stage inference pipeline: AAC computes a joint rank correlation cost for every line section across the network and extracts a 42-dimensional feature vector encompassing cost statistics, timing residuals, and topological attributes; feature selection is performed via fused ranking, which combines Pearson correlation, point-biserial correlation, and RF out-of-bag permutation importance through a weighted harmonic mean; the RF classifier directly performs branch identification over the full edge space, and the RF regressor predicts the coarse-location residual from local cost-terrain statistical features along the correctly identified branch, breaking through the 20 m search-step resolution bottleneck. We construct a five-layer physical noise model covering wavefront detection, time synchronization, wave-velocity deviation, reflected-wave misdetection, and terminal failure. Experiments on three structurally distinct 10 kV radial distribution network topologies, each with 5000 independently generated fault samples, demonstrate that branch identification accuracy remains stably above 94%, and residual correction reduces the mean location error from approximately 60 m to approximately 40 m—an improvement exceeding 30%—confirming the effectiveness of the physics–data hybrid framework for TW fault location in distribution networks. Full article

The practical deployment of aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs) is critically limited by uneven Zn²⁺ flux, uncontrolled dendrite growth, and concurrent parasitic reactions—notably the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and anode corrosion—arising from interfacial and kinetic instability during repeated plating/stripping cycles. These issues originate at the zinc anode–electrolyte interface, underscoring the necessity of advanced interfacial engineering. Here, we report a surface-confined polyphenol-derived interphase formed on zinc foil through a 1 min dip treatment in a dilute aqueous solution of a commercial tea polyphenol (TP) mixture (0.02 M); after rinsing and drying, the modified electrode is cycled in a conventional electrolyte to which no TP is deliberately added. This interphase promotes more homogeneous nucleation behaviour through coordination between phenolic oxygen-containing moieties and Zn²⁺, improves electrolyte contact homogeneity and perturbs the local water structure to mitigate water-mediated parasitic reactions. The TP-derived surface modification creates a substantially altered interfacial charging environment (Cdl = 47.25 vs. 16.83 µF cm⁻² for bare Zn) that facilitates more uniform zinc deposition. Symmetric cells with TP@Zn anodes demonstrated exceptional cycling stability exceeding 4000 h at 1 mA cm⁻² and 1 mAh cm⁻² (bare Zn fails within ~240 h under identical conditions), while TP@Zn//V₂O₅ full cells retained 56.2% capacity after 300 cycles at 0.5 A g⁻¹ with a higher median discharge voltage than bare Zn cells, substantially outperforming the latter (31.1% retention). Density functional theory calculations using the selected cluster models yield a markedly more negative electronic interaction energy for Zn²⁺ with an EGCG model ligand (−10.97 eV) than with H₂O (−4.49 eV), qualitatively supporting preferential coordination of Zn²⁺ by phenolic oxygen sites. This work presents a green, facile and potentially scalable interfacial regulation strategy and advances the understanding of natural polyphenols as pre-formed surface conditioners for highly reversible metal anodes. Full article

Automated cotton-percentage identification underpins sustainable textile recycling, but established near-infrared and ATR-FTIR spectroscopy systems cost USD 10,000–25,000 per unit and remain inaccessible to small recyclers. We address this on the CottonFabricImageBD dataset (1300 RGB originals, 13 ordinal cotton classes from 30% to 99%) and report three contributions. First, the Learnable Residual LBP stem, which retains the pretrained ResNet50 first convolution intact and adds a fully differentiable Local Binary Pattern branch as an additive contribution gated by a single learnable scalar $\alpha$ initialized to zero, ensuring the model is numerically equivalent to the baseline at initialization (verified to a maximum absolute logit difference below ${10}^{-4}$). Second, a controlled six-variant comparison (vanilla baseline, CLBP, LBP-Conv, LBP-Residual, LBP+SVM, LBP+ANN) under identical stratified five-fold cross-validation on the 1300 dataset originals. Third, the isolation of pretraining preservation as the dominant architectural variable: the 7.08 pp top-1 gap between LBP-Conv (43.77%) and LBP-Residual (50.85%), both embedding the identical learnable LBP module, is statistically significant ($p=0.004$, uncorrected paired t-test, $df=4$) and consistent across all five folds. This gap mainly reconfirms, in the LBP setting, the established cost of discarding pretrained early-layer filters; by contrast, the improvement of LBP-Residual over the vanilla baseline (1.31 pp top-1) is consistent in direction but not statistically significant at the five-fold level ($p=0.229$), so LBP-Residual, CLBP (50.23% top-1), and the baseline (49.54% top-1) are statistically tied on aggregate accuracy and the ranking among them is exploratory. Classical LBP+SVM and LBP+ANN baselines reach 31.85% and 34.46% top-1, confirming a genuine but limited cotton-density signal in hand-crafted descriptors. Compared to the concurrent triplet-architecture approach of Wiedemann et al. (2025), which achieves 48.15% top-1 accuracy on the same dataset under identical five-fold cross-validation, LBP-Residual attains 50.85% top-1 using a single lightweight backbone rather than an ensemble of three. These results support the design principle: augment, do not replace. Full article

The rapid growth of AI-driven workloads, IoT ecosystems, and distributed digital services has exposed fundamental limitations in existing cloud and edge infrastructures, particularly in guaranteeing robust data privacy under emerging quantum threats. Current blockchain-based systems provide integrity and decentralization but rely predominantly on computational cryptography and access-control mechanisms, leaving them vulnerable to future quantum adversaries and large-scale inference attacks. In this paper, we introduce Data Communities as a novel paradigm for privacy-preserving, blockchain-enabled cooperative digital infrastructures, formalized within the Cooperative Digital Infrastructure (CDI) framework. Our approach integrates three complementary privacy protection layers: (i) MuReQua, a quantum-resilient blockchain consensus mechanism leveraging CQKD for cryptographic robustness against Shor-type attacks; (ii) DeSSE, an information-theoretically secure distributed storage model based on n × m fragmentation, ensuring zero information leakage below reconstruction thresholds; and (iii) a multi-tier data sovereignty model (C0–C3) enforcing policy-driven data locality and regulatory compliance across federated nodes. We formalize privacy guarantees through an adversarial model encompassing classical, quantum, insider, and governance-level threats, and demonstrate that the proposed architecture achieves information-theoretic confidentiality, forward secrecy, and attack-resilient distributed governance. A privacy leakage analysis shows that the probability of data reconstruction under sub-threshold compromise is identical to zero, outperforming conventional blockchain storage models based on encryption alone. Simulation and case study results indicate that Data Communities achieve up to 99.999% service availability, 55% reduction in external data exposure, and 22–35% carbon-aware optimization, while maintaining strict privacy guarantees across distributed environments. Compared with existing blockchain systems (e.g., Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric), the proposed framework shifts privacy protection from access-control and pseudonymity to structural, information-theoretic privacy by design. Overall, the results establish Data Communities as a scalable and quantum-resilient foundation for next-generation privacy-preserving blockchain infrastructures, bridging distributed AI, secure storage, and cooperative governance under a unified formal model. Full article

Based on three years of sustained personal observations and extensive on-site interviews, this study is the first to investigate the bird totem worship customs of the Dong ethnic minority in southeast Guizhou, China. The Dong-inhabited regions of southeast Guizhou possess a long-standing tradition of bird totem worship, which has permeated every aspect of local people’s daily life, serving as a living museum where ancient bird totem worship continues to thrive in the present day. Through investigation and research, we can clearly perceive that bird totem worship here is no longer merely evidence of primitive thinking as previously discussed in academic circles, nor is it an endangered intangible cultural heritage. Instead, it represents emotional resonance with a more modern spirit and open-ended identity construction. Faced with the era of the internet and new media, they have broken free from the constraints of totem concepts and taboos, instead embracing creative totem will, totem activities, totem behaviors, and intelligent totems, thereby endowing totems with new belief content and forms of expression. They have transcended the preconceived concepts and fixed thinking about totems in academic discourse, making it an important vehicle for maintaining community relations, strengthening ethnic solidarity, inheriting ethnic culture, and continuing local civilization. Through the contemporary reconstruction of collective behavior, the traffic empowerment of internet short videos, and complex functional transformations, they have constructed a brand-new totem value system in the context of the internet and new media era, organizing a multi-dimensional, comprehensive social ecological view and civilizational value system. It is precisely through this continuous evolution, expansion, and activation in response to changing times that totems have acquired sustained vitality and creativity, providing a vivid case study for the contemporary transformation and creative development of ancient totemic beliefs. This is also the significant importance of field investigation—it enables us to gain entirely new value cognition and different theoretical perspectives from the living site of totem practices. Full article

A smooth window function $♢\left(x\right)\in [0,1]$ that restricts a field-theory action to a finite spacetime domain generates a common conservation structure across diverse experimentally realized finite-time quantum phenomena. Applying the windowed action principle yields windowed Noether identities of the form ${\partial }_{\mu }(♢J^{\mu })=0$: exact conservation of the windowed current, with apparent non-conservation of local currents confined to the boundary layer where ${\partial }_{\mu }♢\ne 0$. This boundary-layer structure is mathematically identical to open-system flux terms in decoherence theory. The formalism is applied to five experimentally established settings: the timelike Unruh effect in trapped-ion detectors, the dynamical Casimir effect in superconducting circuits, quench-induced currents in cold-atom systems, ultrafast coherent control with femtosecond laser pulses, and finite-time scattering theory. In each case, the experimentally specified control window—switching function, drive envelope, quench ramp, pulse envelope, or scattering window—is shown to be an instance of the same formal object ♢, and the windowed Noether identity is derived for each setting in this unified form for the first time. Two results are new: the cross-case identification of all five control functions as instances of ♢ under a single formalism, and the formal consequence that systems with the same ungated Hamiltonian operator content but different temporal control profiles generically produce inequivalent unitary evolutions, formulated here as a structural consequence of explicit domain specification. Here, ♢ is fixed by the experimentally specified control protocol and is neither a new dynamical degree of freedom nor an additional fit function. Although it may be absorbed algebraically into a time-dependent coupling or interaction Hamiltonian, retaining it explicitly exposes the common finite-domain conservation structure across the five settings. In the purely temporal measurement limit, $g\left(t\right)=\lambda ♢\left(t\right)$ reproduces the standard von Neumann system–apparatus coupling, while the action-level extension to $♢\left(x\right)$ permits finite spacetime support and makes the associated boundary-supported current balance explicit. Full article

Education for sustainability should connect planetary environmental change with local place, cultural meaning, and feasible collective action. Yet inclusive arts-based ocean-literacy education remains underexamined, especially for children from migrant backgrounds. This study examines Gyeongju Sea Rescue Team: Protecting the Sea through Minhwa, a five-session programme for elementary-school children from Koryoin and other migrant-background families in South Korea. A provenance-separated dual-strand design combined hybrid thematic analysis of programme documents and non-identifying artwork images with a fully synthetic 100-case corpus used only to audit a future artwork-elicitation protocol and codebook. The documentary strand identified four provisional mechanisms: the ecological reinterpretation of auspicious symbols, localisation through Gyeongju’s maritime heritage, multimodal participation across linguistic differences, and collective stewardship. The synthetic audit did not validate these mechanisms or programme outcomes. Instead, participant-correction and self-action prompts generated more clearly codable material on agency, cultural identity, multilingual meaning-making, and intercultural integration. Two designed perturbation passes yielded a quadratic-weighted kappa of 0.726 as a within-corpus stability diagnostic rather than human intercoder reliability. Diagnostic cases exposed adult projection, assimilationist interpretation, pressure to disclose private meanings, and advice without self-agency. The article proposes a provisional MIOL framework and four safeguards: child-led interpretation, reciprocal cultural exchange, appropriate consent and permissions, and continuity from symbolic expression to sustained action. Synthetic outputs concern method development only and do not represent children’s experiences or programme effectiveness. Full article

Neurodevelopmental disorder, speech impairment, and dysmorphic facies (NEDSID) is an autosomal dominant condition primarily driven by SETD1A haploinsufficiency. While most documented cases are sporadic, genomic mechanisms underlying intrafamilial phenotypic heterogeneity remain poorly understood. This study presents a comprehensive clinical, neurophysiological, and molecular characterization of a two-generation Mexican family segregating a novel heterozygous missense SETD1A variant. Whole-exome sequencing (WES) identified a c.1604G>A (p.Gly535Glu) substitution localized within the critical Functional Location on SETD1A (FLOS) domain, which was validated via automated Sanger sequencing across all family members and 100 ethnically matched controls. The proband exhibited a moderate NEDSID phenotype, including global developmental delay, macrocephaly, borderline IQ (79) with pronounced information-processing deficits, and abnormal EEG sharp waves. Conversely, first-degree relatives carrying the identical variant presented with mild, non-intellectually disabling phenotypes characterized primarily by isolated psychiatric disorders (bipolar disorder, depression) and minimal dysmorphism. Structural 3D modeling and multi-algorithmic in silico profiling confirmed high evolutionary conservation and a deleterious impact (CADD: 22.2, SIFT: 0.00, GERP: 2.924), classifying the variant as a Variant of Uncertain Significance (VUS)/Likely Pathogenic according to ACMG/AMP criteria (PM2, PP1, PP3, PP4). Furthermore, epigenetic dysregulation and chromatin remodeling defects increasingly link these histone-modifier variants to broader psychiatric landscapes. Emerging transcriptomic profiling confirms that dosage-sensitive COMPASS complex disruptions alter downstream neurodevelopmental gene cascades. Our findings present observational evidence of intrafamilial clinical variability in a single pedigree with a SETD1A missense alteration, supporting the hypothesis that non-catalytic domain substitutions may contribute to diverse neurodevelopmental outcomes. Full article

Residual stresses generated during laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) can cause substantial distortion in slender structures, compromising dimensional accuracy and structural reliability. This study tests the hypothesis that, under identical nominal processing conditions, geometry-dependent stiffness and constraint govern how the evolving thermally induced stress field is redistributed and manifested as warpage after support removal. Bridge-type TA15 titanium alloy cantilever specimens with different spans, thicknesses, and support densities were fabricated by LPBF, and their post-cut warpage was quantified by three-dimensional scanning. A coupled thermo-mechanical finite element model was validated against the measured deformation profiles and subsequently used to examine simulated stress evolution during deposition and redistribution after support removal. Cantilevers with different spans approached similarly high simulated surface tensile-stress plateaus in the constrained as-built state but exhibited markedly different measured warpage after cutting, showing that the as-built stress magnitude alone does not reliably rank post-release deformation. Increasing span reduced global flexural resistance and enlarged the effective bending arm, whereas increasing thickness enhanced flexural rigidity and suppressed curvature even when relatively high localized stress was retained. With the total support volume held constant, changing support density altered the system-level constraint through the combined effects of support-leg stiffness, support spacing, local thermal and mechanical response, and deformation compatibility. Together, these results provide an experimentally supported process-structure interpretation of LPBF cantilever distortion across controlled variations in span, thickness, and support distribution. Full article